Digging to America

At eight o'clock in the evening, the Baltimore airport was nearly deserted. The wide gray corridors were empty, and the newsstands were dark, and the coffee shops were closed. Most of the gates had admitted their last flights. Their signboards were blank and their rows of vinyl chairs unoccupied and ghostly.

But you could hear a distant hum, a murmur of anticipation, at the far end of Pier D. You could see an overexcited child spinning herself into dizziness in the center of the corridor, and then a grownup popping forth to scoop her up and carry her, giggling and squirming, back into the waiting area. And a latecomer, a woman in a yellow dress, was rushing toward the gate with an armful of long-stemmed roses.

Step around the bend, then, and you'd come upon what looked like a gigantic baby shower. The entire waiting area for the flight from San Francisco was packed with people bearing pink- and blue-wrapped gifts, or hanging on to flotillas of silvery balloons printed with IT'S A GIRL! and trailing spirals of pink ribbon. A man gripped the wicker handle of a wheeled and skirted bassinet as if he planned to roll it onto the plane, and a woman stood ready with a stroller so chrome-trimmed and bristling with levers that it seemed capable of entering the Indy 500. At least half a dozen people held video cameras, and many more had regular cameras slung around their necks. A woman spoke into a tape recorder in an urgent, secretive way. The man next to her clasped an infant's velour-upholstered car seat close to his chest.

MOM, the button on the woman's shoulder read one of those laminated buttons such as you might see in an election year. And the man's read DAD. A nice-looking couple, not as young as you might expect the woman in wide black pants and an arty black-and-white top of a geometric design, her short hair streaked with gray; the man a big, beaming, jovial type with a stubbly blond buzz cut, his bald knees poking bashfully from voluminous khaki Bermudas.

And not only were there MOM and DAD; there were GRANDMA and GRANDPA, twice over two complete sets. One grandma was a rumpled, comfortable woman in a denim sundress and bandanna-print baseball cap; the other was thin and gilded and expertly made up, wearing an ecru linen pantsuit and dyed-to-match pumps. The grandpas were dyed to match as well the rumpled woman's husband equally rumpled, his iron-gray curls overdue for a cutting, while the gilded woman's husband wore linen trousers and some sort of gauzy tropical shirt, and part of his bright yellow hair was possibly not his own.

It's true there were other people waiting, people clearly not included in the celebration. A weary-eyed woman in curlers; an older woman with a younger one who might have been her daughter; a father with two small children already dressed in pajamas. These outsiders stood around the edges, quiet and somehow dimmed, from time to time sneaking glances in the direction of MOM and DAD.

The plane was late. People grew restless. A child pointed out accusingly that the arrivals board still read ON TIME a plain old lie. Several teenagers wandered off to the unlit waiting area just across the corridor. A little girl in pigtails fell asleep on a vinyl chair, the button on her green plaid blouse proclaiming COUSIN.

Then something changed. There wasn't any announcement the PA system had been silent for some time but people gradually stopped talking and pressed toward the jetway, craning their necks, standing on tiptoe. A woman in a uniform punched in a code and swung open the jetway door. A skycap arrived with a wheelchair. The teenagers reappeared. MOM and DAD, till now in the very center of the crowd, were nudged forward with encouraging pats, a path magically widening to let them approach the door.

First off was a very tall young man in jeans, wearing the confused look of someone who'd been flying too long. He spotted the mother and daughter and went over to them and bent to kiss the daughter, but only on the cheek because she was too busy peering past him, just briefly returning his hug while she kept her eyes on the new arrivals.

Two businessmen with briefcases, striding purposefully toward the terminal. A teenage boy with a backpack so huge that he resembled an ant with an oversized breadcrumb. Another businessman. Another teenage boy, this one claimed by the woman in curlers. A smiling, rosy-cheeked redhead instantly engulfed by the two children in pajamas.

Now a pause. A sort of gathering of focus.

A crisply dressed Asian woman stepped through the door with a baby. This baby was perhaps five or six months old able to hold herself confidently upright. She had a cushiony face and a head of amazingly thick black hair, cut straight across her forehead and straight across the tops of her ears, and she wore a footed pink sleeper. Ah! everyone breathed even the outsiders, even the mother and the grown daughter. (Although the daughter's young man still appeared confused.) The mother-to-be stretched out both arms, letting her tape recorder bounce at the end of its strap. But the Asian woman stopped short in an authoritative manner that warded off any approach. She drew herself up and said, Donaldson?

Donaldson. That's us, the father-to-be said. His voice was shaking. He had somehow got rid of the car seat, passed it blindly to someone or other, but he stayed slightly to the rear of his wife and kept one hand on her back as if in need of support.

Congratulations, the Asian woman said. This is Jin-Ho. She transferred the baby to the mother's waiting arms, and then she unhitched a pink diaper bag from her shoulder and handed it to the father. The mother buried her face in the crook of the baby's neck. The baby stayed upright, gazing calmly out at the crowd. Ah, people kept saying, and Isn't she a cutie! and Did you ever see such a doll?

Flashbulbs, insistent video cameras, everyone pressing too close. The father's eyes were wet. Lots of people's were; there were sniffing sounds all through the waiting area and noses being blown. And when the mother raised her face, finally, her cheeks were sheeted with tears. Here, she told the father. You hold her.

Aw, no, I'm scared I might… You do it, honey. I'll watch.

The Asian woman started riffling through a sheaf of papers. People still disembarking had to step around her, step around the little family and the well-wishers and the tangle of baby equipment. Luckily, the flight hadn't been a full one. The passengers arrived in spurts: man with a cane, pause; retired couple, pause…

And then another Asian woman, younger than the first and plainer, with a tucked, apologetic way of looking about. She was lugging a bucket-shaped infant carrier by the handle, and you could tell that the baby inside must not weigh all that much. This baby, too, was a girl, if you could judge by the pink T-shirt, but she was smaller than the first one, sallow and pinched, with fragile wisps of black hair trailing down her forehead. Like the young woman transporting her, she showed a sort of anxious interest in the crowd. Her watchful black eyes moved too quickly from face to face.

The young woman said something that sounded like Yaz-dun?

Yaz-dan, a woman called from the rear. It sounded like a correction. The crowd parted again, not certain which way to move but eager to be of help, and three people no one had noticed before approached in single file: a youngish couple, foreign-looking, olive-skinned and attractive, followed by a slim older woman with a chignon of sleek black hair knotted low on the nape of her neck. It must have been she who had called out their name, because now she called it again in the same clear, carrying voice. Here we are. Yazdan. There was just the trace of an accent evident in the ruffled r's.

The young woman turned to face them, holding the carrier awkwardly in front of her. Congratulations, this is Sooki, she said, but so softly and so breathlessly that people had to ask each other, What? Who did she say? Sooki, I believe it was. Sooki! Isn't that sweet!

There was a problem unfastening the straps that held the baby in her carrier. The new parents had to do it because the Asian woman's hands were full, and the parents were flustered and unskilled the mother laughing slightly and tossing back her explosive waterfall of hennaed curls, the father biting his lip and looking vexed with himself. He wore tiny, very clean rimless glasses that glittered as he angled first this way and then that, struggling with a plastic clasp. The grandmother, if that was who she was, made sympathetic tsk-tsking sounds.

But at last the baby was free. Such a little bit of a thing! The father plucked her out in a gingerly, arm's-length manner and handed her to the mother, who gathered her in and rocked her and pressed her cheek against the top of the baby's feathery black head. The baby quirked her eyebrows but offered no resistance. Onlookers were blowing their noses again, and the father had to take off his glasses and wipe the lenses, but the mother and the grandmother stayed dry-eyed, smiling and softly murmuring. They paid no attention to the crowd. When someone asked, Is yours from Korea too? neither woman answered, and it was the father, finally, who said, Hmm? Oh. Yes, she is.

Hear that, Bitsy and Brad? Here's another Korean baby!

The first mother glanced around she was allowing the two grandmas a closer inspection and said, Really? Her husband echoed her: Really! He stepped over to the other parents and held out his hand. Brad Donaldson. That's my wife, Bitsy, over there.

How do you do, the second father said. Sami Yazdan. He shook Brad's hand, but his lack of interest was almost comical; he couldn't keep his eyes off his baby. Uh, my wife, Ziba, he added after a moment. My mother, Maryam. He had a normal Baltimore accent, although he pronounced the two women's names as no American would have Zee-bah and Mar-yam. His wife didn't even look up. She was cradling the baby and saying what sounded like Soo-soo-soo. Brad Donaldson flapped a hand genially in her direction and returned to his own family.

By the time the transfers had been made official both Asian women proving to be sticklers for detail the Donaldson crowd had started to thin. Evidently some sort of gathering was planned for later, though, because people kept calling, See you back at the house! as they moved toward the terminal. And then the parents themselves were free to go, Bitsy leading the way while the woman with the stroller wheeled it just behind her like a lady-in-waiting. (Clearly nothing would persuade Bitsy to give up her hold on that baby.) Brad lumbered after her, followed by a few stragglers and, at the very tail end, the Yazdans. One of the Donaldson grandpas, the rumpled one, dropped back to ask the Yazdans, So. Did you have a long wait for your baby? Lots of paperwork and cross-examinations?

Yes, Sami said, a very long wait. A very long-drawn-out process. And he glanced toward his wife. At times we thought it never would happen, he said.

The grandpa clucked and said, Don't I know it! Lord, what Bitsy and Brad had to put themselves through!

They passed to one side of Security, which was staffed by a lone employee sitting on a stool, and started down the escalator all but the man with the bassinet. He had to take the elevator. The woman with the stroller, however, seemed undaunted. She tipped the front end of the stroller back smartly and stepped on without hesitation.

Listen, Brad called up to the Yazdans from the lower level. You-all feel like coming to our house? Joining the celebration?

But Sami was absorbed in guiding his wife onto the escalator, and when he didn't answer, Brad flapped a hand again in that oh-well, affable way of his. Maybe another time, he said to no one in particular. And he turned to catch up with the others.

The exit doors slid open and the Donaldsons streamed out. They headed toward the parking garage in twos and threes and fours, and shortly after that the Yazdans emerged to stand on the curb a moment, motionless, as if they needed time to adjust to the hot, humid, dimly lit, gasoline-smelling night.

Friday, August 15, 1997. The night the girls arrived.

Sometimes when Maryam Yazdan looked at her new little granddaughter she had an eerie, lightheaded feeling, as if she had stepped into some sort of alternate universe. Everything about the child was impossibly perfect. Her skin was a flawless ivory, and her hair was almost too soft to register on Maryam's fingertips. Her eyes were the shape of watermelon seeds, very black and cut very precisely into her small, solemn face. She weighed so little that Maryam often lifted her too high by mistake when she picked her up. And her hands! Tiny hands, with curling fingers. The wrinkles on her knuckles were halvah-colored (so amusing, that a baby had wrinkles!), and her nails were no bigger than dots.

Susan, they called her. They chose a name that resembled the name she had come with, Sooki, and also it was a comfortable sound for Iranians to pronounce.

Su-san! Maryam would sing when she went in to get her from her nap. Su-Su-Su! Susan would gaze out from behind the bars of her crib, sitting beautifully erect with one hand cupping each knee in a poised and self-possessed manner.

Maryam took care of her Tuesdays and Thursdays the days her daughter-in-law worked and Maryam did not. She arrived at the house around eight-thirty, slightly later if the traffic was bad. (Sami and Ziba lived out in Hunt Valley, as much as a half-hour drive from the city during rush hour.) By that time Susan would be having breakfast in her high chair. She would light up and make a welcoming sound when Maryam walked into the kitchen. Ah! was what she most often said nothing to do with Mari — june, which was what they had decided she should call Maryam. Ah! she would say, and she would give her distinctive smile, with her lips pursed together demurely, and tilt her cheek for a kiss.

Well, not in the first few weeks, of course. Oh, those first weeks had been agony, the two parents trying their best, shrilling Susiejune! and shaking toys in her face and waltzing her about in their arms. All she did was stare at them, or worse yet stare away from them, twisting to get free, fixing her eyes stubbornly anywhere else. She wouldn't take more than a sip or two from her bottle, and when she woke crying in the night, as she did every few hours, her parents' attempts to comfort her only made her cry harder. Maryam told them that was natural. In truth she had no idea, but she told them, She came from a foster home! What do you expect? She's not used to so much attention.

Jin-Ho came from a foster home too. She's not acting like this, Ziba said.

They knew all about Jin-Ho because Jin-Ho's mother had telephoned two weeks after the babies' arrival. I hope you don't mind my tracking you down, she'd said. You're the only Yazdans in the book and I just couldn't resist calling you to find out how things were going. Jin-Ho, it seemed, was doing marvelously. She was sleeping straight through till morning, and she laughed out loud when they played This Is the Way the Lady Rides, and already she had learned to stop clamoring for her bottle once she heard the microwave starting. And Jin-Ho was younger than Susan! She was five months to Susan's seven, even if Susan was smaller. Were the Yazdans doing something wrong?

No, no, no, Maryam told them. Slightly altering her story, she said, It's better that Susan's sad. It means the foster family took good care of her and now she's homesick for them. You wouldn't want a heartless, heedless baby, would you? She's showing she has a warm nature.

Maryam hoped that this was true.

And it was, thank heaven. One morning Ziba walked into the nursery and Susan gave her a smile. Ziba was so excited that she telephoned Maryam at once, although it was a Tuesday and Maryam was due to come over very shortly; and she phoned her mother in Washington and later her sisters-in-law in L. A. It seemed that some switch had clicked in Susan's head, for she smiled at Maryam as well when she arrived her smile already that charming, pursed V that made you feel the two of you shared some merry little secret. And within the week she was chortling at Sami's antics, and sleeping through the night, and showing a fondness for Cheerios, which she pursued single-mindedly around her high-chair tray with her dainty, pincer fingers.

Didn't I tell you? Maryam said.

She was an optimist, Maryam was. Or on second thought, not an optimist: a pessimist. But her life had been rocky enough that she faced possible disasters more philosophically than most. She had had to forsake her family before she was twenty; she'd been widowed before she was forty; she had raised her son by herself in a country where she would never feel like anything but a foreigner. Basically, though, she believed that she was a happy person. She was confident that if things went wrong as they very well might she could manage.

Now she saw the same quality in Susan. Call her fanciful, but she had felt a deep connection to Susan the moment they met in the airport. Sometimes she imagined that Susan resembled her physically, even, but then she had to laugh at herself. Still, something around the eyes, some way of looking at things, some onlooker's look: that was what they shared. Neither one of them quite belonged.

Her son belonged. Her son didn't even have an accent; he had refused to speak Farsi from the time he was four years old, although he could understand it. Her daughter-in-law had a noticeable accent, having immigrated with her whole family when she was already in high school, but she had so immediately and enthusiastically adapted listening nonstop to 98 Rock, hanging out at the mall, draping her small, bony, un-American frame in blue jeans and baggy T-shirts with writing printed across them that now she seemed native-born, almost.

Ziba left for work when it suited her; she was an interior decorator and arranged her own appointments. Often she'd be loitering around the house a full hour after Maryam's arrival. She was already dressed for the office, not that you would guess it (she still wore jeans, although she'd graduated to blazers and high heels), but it seemed she couldn't quite tear herself away from Susan. What do you think? she would ask Maryam. Is another tooth coming in, or is it not? A thin white line is on her gum; do you see? Or she would collect her pocketbook, unplug her cell phone from its charger, but then: Oh! Maryam! I nearly forgot! Watch how she's learned to play peekaboo!

Maryam would inwardly chafe, longing to have this child to herself. Go! Go! she wanted to say. But she smiled and kept quiet. Then at last Ziba would be on her way, and Maryam could sweep Susan into her arms and carry her off to the playroom. All mine! she crowed, and Susan giggled as if she understood. Left in charge, Maryam was more sure of herself. Child-rearing had changed so since her day the endless new lists of forbidden foods (peanuts a toxic substance, you'd think); the regulation car seats; the ban on talcum powder and baby oil and pillows and crib bumper pads that Maryam often felt incompetent in Ziba's presence. With Ziba there, she walked on tiptoe the way her own mother had tiptoed, she realized, the one time she had come to visit. Her mother had arrived with a holy medal to hang around Sami's neck, a little gold dime-sized Allah that a two-year-old would have swallowed in a blink, if Maryam had not insisted in putting it aside for later; and her mother had plied Sami with gummy white rosewater candies that would have ruined his teeth and stuck in his throat if Maryam had not clamped the box firmly shut and carried it off to the pantry. By the end of the visit, her mother had retreated to the television set, even though she couldn't understand a word of what was said. Now Maryam recalled with a pang her mother's stoical posture, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes fixed steadily upon a commercial for Kent cigarettes. She batted the image away. She said, Bunny rabbit, Susie — june! Look! and held up a little stuffed animal that jingled when she wagged it.

Susan wore blue jeans also. (Who knew they made jeans so tiny?) She wore a red-and-white-striped long-sleeved T-shirt that could just as well have been a boy's, and little red socks with nonskid soles. The socks were a new addition till the weather turned cold she'd gone barefoot and she didn't like them. She kept tugging them off her feet with a triumphant squawk, and then Maryam hoisted her into her lap and put them on again. Wicked girl! she scolded. Susan laughed. As soon as she was set back down on the rug she would fling herself on her favorite toy, a xylophone that she banged energetically with any object at hand. She didn't crawl yet she was a bit behind in her physical skills, which Maryam blamed on life in the foster home but clearly she was working on it.

If it were up to her, Maryam would have dressed this child differently. She'd have chosen more feminine clothes, little white tights and A-line jumpers and blouses with ruffles. Wasn't that part of the fun of having a girl? (Oh, how she used to hope for a girl after Sami was born!) She herself dressed with the utmost care even just to babysit. She wore trousers, yes, but slim, tailored trousers, with a fitted sweater in some jewel color and good shoes. She regularly had the gray tinted from her hair, although she preferred that this not be known, and she secured her chignon with tortoiseshell combs or brightly patterned scarves. It was important to keep up appearances. She believed that. Let the Americans lounge about in their sweatsuits! She was not American.

Not American! Check your passport, Sami always told her. She said, You understand what I mean.

She was a guest, was what she meant. Still and forever a guest, on her very best behavior.

Perhaps if she lived in Iran, she would have been more casual. Oh, not that she would have let herself go, nothing so extreme as all that, but she might have worn a housecoat at home the way her mother and aunts used to do. Or would she? She couldn't even imagine now what her life would be like if she had not moved to Baltimore.

Susan was in the process of giving up her morning nap. She might fall asleep when she was put down or she might not; so while Maryam was waiting to find out which, she read the paper or flipped through a magazine, something that didn't require an uninterrupted block of time. If so much as half an hour passed and Susan was still chirping, Maryam would get her up again. Once more they would go through their reunion scene Susan's Ah! and Maryam's Su-Su-Su! Maryam would change her diaper and put her in a sweater and take her out in the stroller.

There were no sidewalks here. Maryam found that amazing. How could they have constructed an entire neighborhood long curving roads of gigantic, raw new houses with two-story arched windows and double-wide front doors and three-car garages and failed to realize that people might want to walk around it? There weren't any trees either, unless you counted the twiglike saplings staked in all the front yards. (Tiny yards. The houses had devoured most of the available space.) In weeks past, when it was still hot, Maryam had often kept Susan inside, knowing they'd find not a chip of shade anywhere and the pavements would be radiating heat. But now that fall had arrived the sun felt good. She would stretch their walk till lunchtime, covering every smooth, blank, uncannily deserted street in Foxfoot Acres and commenting as she went. Car, Susan! See the car? Mailbox! See the mailbox?

In her own neighborhood there were squirrels, and dogs on leashes, and other children in carriages and strollers. She would have had many more sights to point out.

Lunch was strained baby foods for Susan and a salad for Maryam. Then Susan had a little playpen time in the family room extending from the kitchen while Maryam did the dishes, and after that a bottle and another nap this one long enough that Maryam was free to fix something for Sami and Ziba's supper. Not that they expected it, but she had always enjoyed cooking and Ziba, it turned out, did not. Left to their own devices, they tended to eat Lean Cuisines.

While the rice was boiling, she straightened the house. She put Susan's toys in the toy chest and carried a bagful of wet diapers out to the garbage can. She stacked and aligned various reading materials but did not throw away so much as a scrap of paper, not a subscription card or a pizza flyer, for fear of overstepping.

Again she had an image of her mother, this time stooping painfully to retrieve a chewing-gum wrapper and placing it silently, almost reverently, in an ashtray on the coffee table.

This house was as big as the neighboring houses, with a room for every purpose. It had not only a family room but an exercise room and a computer room, each one carpeted wall to wall in solid off-white. There wasn't a Persian rug anywhere, although you might guess that the occupants were Iranian from the wedding gifts in the dining-room cabinet the Isfahani coffee sets and the tea glasses caged in silver. The playroom had been fully stocked with toys as soon as the agency sent Susan's photograph. And the nursery was ready long before that, the crib and bureau and changing table purchased back when Ziba was first trying to get pregnant. (Maryam's mother would have said that preparing so far ahead was what had doomed them. Didn't I warn you? she would have asked, each month when Ziba once again reported failure.)

Maryam had told Ziba to trust in the power of time. You'll have your baby! You'll have a houseful of babies, she'd said. And she had confided her own long wait. Five years we tried, before Sami was born. I was in despair. This was a great concession on her part. To speak openly of trying was so indiscreet. (She had been stunned when Ziba first spoke of it. Not a comfortable thought at all, one's son having a sex life, even though of course Maryam assumed that he did.) Besides which, she had always told her relatives that that five-year wait was deliberate. Visiting back home three years after her wedding, she had parried their sly questions with boasts about her independence, her relief that she was not burdened yet with children. I take courses at the university; I'm active in the wives' group at the hospital. . While in fact, she had wanted a baby right away something to anchor her, she had envisioned, to her new country.

She saw herself now on that first visit home: her clothes chosen carefully for their Westernness, stylish sheaths in electric prints of hot pink and lime green and purple; her hair lacquered into a towering beehive; her feet encased in needle-toed, stiletto-heeled pumps. She winced.

She winced too at recalling her automatic assumption that Ziba's failure to get pregnant was exactly that Ziba's failure. When they discovered that it was, instead, Sami's failure, Maryam had been shocked. Mumps, perhaps, the doctors said. Mumps? Sami had never had mumps! Or had he? Wouldn't she have known? Did he have them while he was away in college, and he had felt too embarrassed to mention such things to a woman?

He'd been fourteen years old when his father diedjust beginning to turn adolescent, with a fuzzy dark upper lip and a grainy voice. She had wondered how she could possibly see him through this stage on her own. She knew so little about the opposite sex; she'd lost her father when she was a child and had never been close to her brothers, who were nearly grown before she was born. If only Kiyan could have stayed alive just a little while longer, just four or five years longer, till Sami had become a man!

Although now she wasn't so sure that Kiyan would have known much, either, about the process of becoming an American man.

And if Kiyan could have shared grandparenthood with her! That was a major sorrow, now that Susan was here. She imagined how it would be if the two of them were babysitting together. They would send each other smiles over Susan's head, marveling at her puckery frown and her threadlike eyebrows and her studious examination of a stray bit of lint from the carpet. Kiyan would have retired by now. (He'd been nine years Maryam's senior.) They would have had all the time in the world to enjoy this part of their lives.

She went out to the kitchen and took the rice off the stove and dumped it briskly into a colander.

By the time Ziba had returned from work, Susan would be awake again and drinking her post-nap sippy cup of apple juice, or she'd have moved on to haul forth from the toy chest everything that Maryam had put away. Ziba would scoop her up even before she'd taken her blazer off. Did you have fun with your Mari — june, Su-Su? Did you miss your mommy? They would delicately touch noses Ziba's profile beaky and sharp, Susan's as flat as a cookie. Did you think your mommy would stay away forever? Always she spoke English to Susan; she said she didn't want to confuse her. Maryam had expected her to lapse into Farsi from time to time, but Ziba plowed heroically through the most difficult words think, with its sticky th sound, and stay, which came out es-stay. (To her own puzzlement, Maryam found Ziba's broken rhythms much easier to understand than Sami's smooth, easy flow.)

Maryam located her purse and put on her suede jacket. Don't go! Ziba would say. What's your hurry? Let me make tea. Most days, Maryam declined. Issuing farewell remarks instructions for heating dinner, message from the dentist's office she would blow a kiss toward Susan and let herself out the front door. She was trying to be the perfect mother-in-law. She didn't want Ziba to consider her a nuisance.

Often when she reached home she would just vegetate awhile, slumped in her favorite armchair, free at last to relax and let herself be herself.

Jin-Ho's mother phoned in October to invite them all to supper. This was while Maryam was babysitting, and so she was the one who answered. You come too, Bitsy told her. It's going to be just us, our two families, because I believe the girls should get to know each other, don't you? So as to maintain their cultural heritage. I meant to ask you before this but what with one thing and another… An early, early supper, I thought, on Sunday afternoon. We'll rake leaves beforehand.

Maryam said, Rake…?

She wondered if this was some idiomatic expression having to do with socializing. Break the ice, mend fences, chew the fat, rake leaves… But Bitsy was saying, We still have elms, believe it or not, and they're always the first trees to shed. We thought we'd throw a big jolly leaf-raking party and let the girls roll around in the piles.

Oh. All right. You're very kind, Maryam said.

She liked the way Bitsy called the babies the girls. It made her visualize a Susan of the future, wearing knee socks and a pleated skirt, with her arm linked through her best friend's arm.

Logically, they should have taken separate cars to the leaf-raking party. The Donaldsons lived in Mount Washington and Maryam a short distance south of them, in Roland Park. (The wrong side of Roland Park, so called, although even the wrong side was very nice, the houses just a bit smaller and closer together.) Sami and Ziba, coming from the north, would have to drive right past the Donaldsons' neighborhood to get to Maryam's; but even so, they insisted on giving her a ride. Maryam suspected that this was because Ziba felt the need of moral support. Ziba was subject to fits of insecurity every now and then. And sure enough, when they arrived at Maryam's where Maryam was already waiting out front, so as not to hold them up Ziba popped from the car to announce that they were going to come in for a moment because she worried they were too early. Maryam said, Early? She checked her watch. It was 3:55. They'd been invited for four o'clock, and the drive would take roughly five minutes. We're not early! she said. But Ziba was already extricating Susan from her car seat. Sami, stepping out from behind the wheel, said, Ziba claims that four o'clock means ten past four, in Baltimore.

Not when only one set of guests has been invited, Maryam told him. (She had studied these customs at some length herself.) But Ziba had Susan in her arms by now and was coming up the front walk. She wore the offhand kind of clothes appropriate for leafraking jeans and a bulky rose turtleneck but had obviously spent some time on her hair and makeup. A huge, horizontal ponytail jutted from the back of her head, so frizzy that it defied gravity, and her lips were two different colors, shiny pink outlined in a red that was almost black. You look very nice, Maryam told her. She meant this sincerely. Ziba was a strikingly pretty young woman. And Sami was so handsome! He had his father's chiseled mouth and thick eyebrows. His rimless, old-man spectacles somehow made him seem younger, and the collar of his plaid flannel shirt stood up boyishly at the back. Ten minutes early, ten minutes late, what difference does it make? he asked his mother. He kissed her on both cheeks. Check out Susan's work clothes.

Susan wore blue denim overalls, faded convincingly at the knees, and a chambray shirt. Her jacket, also blue denim, had a tractor appliquTd on one pocket. You're all ready to help us rake! Maryam told her, and she lifted her from Ziba's arms.

We're bringing a bottle of wine, Ziba said. What do you think? Is that wrong? I know it's still daylight, but we're staying for supper, after all.

Wine is perfect, Maryam said, jouncing Susan on her hip. We should certainly bring wine. Isn't that so, Susie — june.

Susan gave her a secretive smile.

Shall we go in and sit down? Ziba asked.

What for? We'll just have to get up again, Sami said. She acts like it's some big deal, he told his mother, and then to Ziba he said, We visit people all the time. Why is this any different?

But these people are older than our other friends, Ziba said. Bitsy is forty, she told Maryam. She mentioned it on the phone.

She's a weaver and she used to teach yoga and she writes poetry and… oh, what will we talk about? she ended on a wailing note. Babies, Maryam said.

Ah, Ziba said, brightening. Babies.

What else do we talk about, these days? Sami asked the sky. The Donaldsons' baby is keeping her Korean name for good, Ziba told Maryam.

Jin-Ho Donaldson, Maryam tried out. It had a peculiar ring. Donaldson seemed so ultra-American, or was that because she was reminded of McDonald's hamburgers?

Jin-Ho Dickinson-Donaldson, actually, Ziba said.

Maryam's jaw dropped. Sami laughed. Then he said, Okay, folks, it's four o'clock. Time to hit the road.

Ziba turned to follow him back to the car, but she seemed to be lagging a bit, Maryam noticed.

As always, the two women had their ceremonial disagreement about who should sit where. Please, Ziba said, gesturing toward the front, but Maryam said, I like the back. This way I sit next to Susan. She handed Susan to Ziba, who would make quicker work of buckling her in, and walked around the rear of the car to slip in on the other side. Sami had his seat adjusted far enough back so that it touched her knees, but not uncomfortably. She had spoken the truth when she said she preferred to sit there. How awkward if she had assumed the seat of honor, as her own mother-in-law used to do! Although she had an odd sense of being a child again, Susan's sibling, as the two of them swayed from side to side when Sami turned a corner.

The Donaldsons' house was a worn white clapboard Colonial on one of the narrower streets in Mount Washington. The sprawling, woodsy yard was ankle-deep in yellow leaves that clattered as the Yazdans waded up the front walk, and the porch was strewn with bicycles and boots and garden tools. It was Brad who opened the door, wearing corduroys and a woolen shirt stretched taut across his belly. Well, hey! he said. Welcome! Great to see you! and he chucked Susan under the chin. This kid has plumped up some. She was looking a bit peaked at the airport.

Fifteen pounds, three ounces, at her last doctor visit, Ziba told him.

Fifteen? He frowned.

And three ounces.

I guess she's going to be one of those petite little people, he said.

Jin-Ho was going to be an Amazon, Maryam thought when she saw her straddling Bitsy's waist. She was stocky and bloomingly healthy-looking, with fat cheeks and bright, laughing eyes. She still wore that squared-off hairstyle she had arrived with, seemingly all of a piece, and although she too was in corduroys, her top was a multicolored, quilted affair with striped sleeves and a black silk sash the kind of thing Maryam recalled from the days when Sami and Ziba were researching Korea. Hasn't she grown? Bitsy asked, shifting Jin-Ho slightly to give everyone a good view. These pants are size eighteen months! We had to switch her to a full crib the second week she was here.

Bitsy herself wore a black-and-white-striped jersey and black slacks and fluorescent jogging shoes. There was something aggressive about her plainness, Maryam thought her blatant lack of makeup, her chopped hair and angular, rawboned body. She might almost be making a statement. Next to her, Ziba looked very glamorous but also a little bit flashy.

First they sat a few minutes in the living room, waiting for Jin-Ho's grandparents. Both couples were coming, Bitsy said, but none of the aunts or uncles or cousins because too large a crowd might overwhelm the girls. In fact, the girls seemed fairly impervious. They sat on a braided rug and pursued their separate activities Jin-Ho piling alphabet blocks into a dump truck, Susan trying to maneuver a jingle-bell out of a wooden rattle. Susan was so sweet and intent, and her fingers worked so cleverly, that Maryam wondered if the Donaldsons might feel slightly envious.

Bitsy and Ziba were discussing lactose intolerance. Bitsy blamed it on a clash of cultures. It wasn't in the Asian tradition to slug down gallons of milk, after all. No wonder Jin-Ho had tummy trouble! Did Susan? Or… Bitsy grew unaccountably flustered. Or maybe your people don't drink milk either, she said.

Well, Susan does, Ziba said, but so far she's been fine.

You might want to give her soy milk. Soy is more culturally appropriate.

Oh, maybe I will, Ziba said obligingly.

Though Maryam, in her place, would have asked why. Hadn't Ziba just now said that Susan was fine?

The Donaldsons' living room was attractive without trying too hard. Sunlight poured through the uncurtained windows, and the furniture was old but well made, perhaps handed down from previous generations. Brad was slouched in a leather armchair that creaked each time he moved. Sami sat in an antique rocker a good six inches lower. He was nodding at Brad's description of the joys of fatherhood. Sunday mornings, Jin-Ho and I go out for croissants and the New York Times, Brad said. It's my favorite thing of the week. I love it! Just me and my kid together. You ever do that with Susan? Go off on your own for a jaunt?

So far Sami lacked the confidence to do that, Maryam knew. But he didn't admit it. Gazing up at Brad from his lowered position, which made him seem touchingly humble, he said, Well, I've been thinking of buying a jogging stroller.

Jogging stroller! Great invention. Fellow up the street has one. I'll find out the brand. Be good for your wife, too; good for Ziba. Get her out of the house.

Zee-buh, he said, almost zebra, and he slid her a look. American men always found Ziba mesmerizing. Maryam was amused to see that Brad despite choosing such a homespun wife himself was no exception.

The two sets of grandparents arrived at nearly the same time, Bitsy's parents first and Brad's close on their heels. Bitsy's parents were big and gray and friendly, Dave in coveralls like some ordinary yardman and Connie in sweatpants and the same bandanna-print cap she'd had on at the airport. Brad's parents, with their glittery blond hair and matching velour warm-up suits, seemed a little more formal. Pat and Lou, their names were. The man was Pat and the woman was Lou, or was it the other way around? Maryam knew she was going to have trouble with that.

For a few minutes the four of them performed their grandparent dance around the babies. They exclaimed at Jin-Ho's quilted top, which Connie called by a foreign name, and made a nice to-do over Susan. Isn't she just like a miniature! Brad's mother caroled, and Dave scooped her right up. Luckily, Susan took this in stride. She reached for one of his curly gray sideburns and gave it a tug, dead serious, knitting her brow when he chuckled.

See how Jin-Ho looks so tan-skinned next to Susan, Ziba pointed out. We think Susan's father maybe was white.

Yes, you're just a little white tooth of a thing, Dave told Susan, but Bitsy jumped in with, Oh! Well! But actually that's not something we would notice, really!

There was a silence. Ziba rounded her eyes at Maryam Why not? and Maryam gave the tiniest shrug. Then Brad said, So any-ways. You guys ready to tackle those leaves?

Judging by the number of rakes propped out on the porch, Maryam guessed the Donaldsons had held these gatherings before. She would never have done that herself (she kept after her own leaves singlehandedly from the day they began to fall), but that was Americans for you. And it did turn out to be a real social event. For one thing, they were all put to work on the same section of yard, so that conversation could flow. And then there was no sense of pressure. Brad's mother didn't even make a pretense of raking, but appointed herself the baby-watcher and stood over Jin-Ho and Susan where they sat among the leaves. Bitsy's mother sank immediately into a canvas chair that her husband brought down from the porch, and she tipped her face up to the sunlight and closed her eyes. That cap made sense, all at once. She was ill, Maryam realized; she must have lost her hair. Even though Dave raked with the others, he stopped frequently to go over to her and ask if she was all right. Yes, fine, Connie said each time, and she would smile and pat his hand. Clearly it was from her that Bitsy got her no-nonsense looks, although Connie seemed softer than Bitsy and more retiring.

Maryam herself worked diligently. She took a position between Bitsy and Lou (it was Lou who was the man of the couple; she believed she had that straight now) and raked in long, steady sweeps toward the pile that had started rising next to the driveway. She and Bitsy got a sort of rhythm going, like a chorus line. Lou was too busy talking to keep up with them. First he talked to Sami, on his other side boring man-talk about jobs, followed by the high price of housing once he learned that Sami sold real estate. Then it was Maryam's turn: how long had she been in this country? and did she like it?

Maryam hated being asked such questions, partly because she had answered them so many times before but also because she preferred to imagine (unreasonable though it was) that maybe she didn't always, instantly, come across as a foreigner. Where are you from? someone might ask just when she was priding herself on having navigated some particularly intricate and illogical piece of English. She longed to say, From Baltimore. Why? but lacked the nerve. Now she spoke so courteously that Lou could have had no inkling how she felt. I've been here thirty-nine years, she said, and, Yes, of course. I love it.

Lou gave a satisfied nod and turned back to his raking. Then Bitsy poked Maryam in the ribs with her elbow. Lou thinks the universe ends just east of Ocean City, she said with a roll of her eyes. Maryam laughed. Bitsy was all right, she decided. And the colorful swath of workers stretching across the yard, creating a busy roaring of leaves and stirring up the dusty smell of autumn, made her feel happy and accepted. Even if she didn't have the slightest illusion that she could live this kind of life herself, she enjoyed getting a peek at it now and then.

Jin-Ho plunged forward to hug a whole armful of leaves and bury her face in them. One leaf fluttered over to land on the front of Susan's jacket, and Susan plucked it off fastidiously and held it up to inspect it.

The front yard was finished in a little more than an hour, a beautiful clean sweep of green, and the men moved on to the back. By then, though, both babies were beginning to fuss; so the women took them inside. In the Donaldsons' big old-fashioned kitchen, Bitsy settled Jin-Ho in her high chair and sliced a banana for her while Ziba fed Susan a bottle. Maryam loved the little sounds that Susan made when she swallowed. Um, um, she said, with her eyes fixed on Ziba's face and one hand rhythmically clutching and releasing Ziba's sweater sleeve. Brad's mother and Maryam sat at the kitchen table with glasses of white wine, but Bitsy's mother went upstairs to lie down awhile. As soon as she'd left the room, Brad's mother said, How is she really, Bitsy?

Bitsy waited so long to answer that Brad's mother said again, Bitsy? But then they all saw that Bitsy's eyes were swimming with tears. She leaned closer to Jin-Ho's high chair and painstakingly aligned several banana slices before she said, in a tight voice, Not so good, I think.

Oh, my. Oh, my, my, Pat said. Well, thank the Lord she's lived to see you get your baby. That means a lot to her, I know.

Bitsy nodded speechlessly, and Maryam, hoping to rescue her, turned to Pat and asked, Did it take a very long time, getting their baby?

Did it ever! It took ages! And then there was that business last year, you remember; the Korean officials were talking about letting fewer children out of the country.

Yes, that was terrible! Ziba said. Sami and I were so worried! Almost we thought we'd have to start over again and adopt from China.

Bitsy said, We thought the same thing, in a voice that was perfectly normal, and nothing more was said about her mother.

A large covered pot was simmering on the stove, and once Jin-Ho had been fed, Bitsy set about stirring and tasting, adjusting seasonings, raising the flame beneath another pot on a back burner. She gave Maryam two avocados to peel and she sent her mother-in-law to the dining room with stacks of plates. I hope no one minds a meatless meal, she said. We're not complete vegetarians, but we try to avoid red meat.

Meatless will be fine. Very healthy, Ziba told her. She had put Susan down on the floor, where Jin-Ho already sat banging pot lids together, and she was watching over both of them.

Bitsy said, We certainly love your cuisine, and she started telling Ziba about something she'd had in a restaurant, a dish whose name she couldn't recall except it had been delicious, while Maryam sliced a peeled avocado into a bowl. Then Pat wanted to know if the Yazdans had run into any unpleasantness during the Iranian hostage crisis, and Ziba said, Well, I had just barely arrived here then; I wasn't very aware. But Maryam, I believe, she had some trouble. . and everyone looked expectantly toward Maryam. She said, Oh, perhaps a little, and cut into the second avocado. Pat and Bitsy tut-tutted and waited to hear more, but she remained silent. She was tired to death of the subject, frankly.

Brad poked his head in the back door and asked, How are things going here? Do we have time to bag the leaves before we eat?

You do not, Bitsy said. I'm just about to start serving.

Okay, I'll go call the others. And he shut the door again.

The main dish was a black-bean concoction served over rice. Maryam actually liked American rice if she thought of it as a completely different substance. She helped Bitsy set out the food while Pat filled the water glasses. All around the table were bowls of chopped green onions and tomatoes, shredded cheese, the sliced avocados, a number of other items that Bitsy said should be scattered on top. She showed Ziba and Maryam where to sit and then called up the stairs, Mom? You feel like coming down?

I'll get her, her father said. He gave off the smell of dry leaves as he passed through the dining room; his large, rough-skinned face was ruddy from the fresh air. And Sami had worked up a sweat. He blotted his forehead with his sleeve and sank into a chair next to Ziba. Everything's raked except for one little patch beside the garage, he told her, and he reached for Susan, who was sitting on Ziba's lap. Did you miss me, Susie — june?

Ah. Hippie food, Brad's father said, peering down at the beans. His wife reached over to slap his wrist. Sit, she told him. Granola au gratin.

There's not one speck of granola anywhere in sight; so sit.

He sat. Bitsy sent Brad a resigned look and then plucked Jin-Ho from the floor and settled in the chair at the head of the table. Now, everybody dig in, she said. Don't wait for Mom and Dad.

Brad was offering beer or red wine, whichever people preferred. These days, we don't even get a cocktail hour, he said as he uncorked the wine. By the time the sun's over the yardarm we're already eating dinner. Nursery hours, that's what we keep. Bitsy goes to bed not much later than Jin-Ho.

I'm always exhausted, Bitsy told Ziba. Are you? I used to be such a night owl! Now I can hardly wait to hit the pillow.

Oh, me too, Ziba said. And Susan gets up so early. Seven. Seven! Count your blessings. Jin-Ho is up at five-thirty or six.

But here's what you do, Ziba: nap. Take a nap when your baby does. Nap?

I put on some classical music; I lie down on the couch; I'm out like a light until she wakes up.

Oh! I wish! Ziba said. She ladled rice onto her plate. But two days a week I'm at work, and the other days I'm trying to catch up with the laundry and the cleaning and such.

You work? Bitsy asked her.

I'm an interior decorator.

I couldn't bear to work! How could you leave your baby?

Ziba stopped dishing out rice and sent Maryam an uncertain glance.

It was Lou who broke the silence. Well, Pat here left her baby from the time he was six weeks old, and see how well he turned out?

Brad took a deep bow before he resumed pouring wine.

But it's the most formative time of their lives, Bitsy said. You'll never get those days back again.

Maryam said, It's very lucky for me that she works. I have Susan all to myself, Tuesdays and Thursdays. It gives us a chance to… She tried to think of the word, the most up-to-date and scientific word that would make her point. Bond, she said finally. It lets us bond.

Bitsy said, I see. But she didn't seem convinced. She hugged Jin-Ho tighter against her and rested her chin on the child's gleaming head. And Ziba still wore her uncertain look. Now that her lipstick had worn away the blackish outline seemed accidental, as if she'd been eating dirt.

From the doorway, Bitsy's mother said, Isn't this lovely! She made her way into the room, reaching out for the back of her chair. Her husband followed a step or two behind. I could smell those wonderful spice smells all the way upstairs, she said as she settled herself. She unfolded her napkin and smiled around the table. Is there a name for this dish?

Habichuelas negras, Bitsy said. It's Cuban.

Cuban! How exciting!

Bitsy sat up straighter, as if she'd just had a thought. You notice I'm wearing black and white, she told Ziba.

Ziba nodded, wide-eyed.

That's because babies don't see colors. Only black and white. I've worn nothing but black and white from the day that Jin-Ho arrived.

Really! Ziba said, and she looked down at her rose turtleneck. You might want to do that, Bitsy told her.

Oh, yes, maybe I should.

Bitsy relaxed and set her chin on Jin-Ho's head again.

But then how is it that Susan is able to pick up her blocks? Maryam asked Bitsy.

Her blocks?

Her pink and blue blocks on a yellow playpen pad. I say, 'Pick up your blocks, Susan,' and she reaches right over for them.

She does? Bitsy asked. She looked at Susan. She picks up her blocks when you tell her to?

From a yellow background, Maryam said. She dished herself some rice and turned to Connie. May I serve you? she asked.

Oh, no, thank you, not just yet, Connie said, although her plate was empty except for a slice of bread.

Bitsy was still studying Susan. For a moment it seemed she couldn't think of anything more to say, but then she turned to Ziba. You put your daughter in a playpen? she asked.

Ziba's uncertain expression returned. Before she could answer, though, Maryam said, And the beans and rice? How about those? Excuse me? Bitsy said.

The black beans and the white rice. Are they for the sake of the babies' eyesight also?

Bitsy looked startled, but when her father-in-law laughed she did manage to smile, a little.

After that the two families got together fairly often, although Maryam politely declined whenever she was invited along. Why would she want to share a young couple's social life? She had friends of her own, mostly women, mostly her own age and nearly always foreigners, although no Iranians, as it happened. They would eat together at restaurants or at one another's houses. They would go to movies or concerts. And then there was her job, of course. Three days a week she worked in the office of Sami's old preschool. No one could say that time hung heavy on her hands.

She did hear about the Donaldsons almost daily, through Ziba. She heard how Bitsy believed in cloth diapers, how Brad worried vaccinations were dangerous, how both of them read Korean folk-tales to Jin-Ho. Ziba switched to cloth diapers too (though in a week or so she switched back). She telephoned her pediatrician about the vaccinations. She plowed dutifully through The Wormwood Rice Cake while Susan, who had not yet got the hang of books, tried her best to crumple the pages. And after the Donald-sons' Christmas party, Ziba bought a forty-cup percolator so that she too could brew hot cider. You put cinnamon sticks and cloves in the basket where the coffee grounds go. Isn't that clever? she asked Maryam.

Ziba had a little crush on the Donaldsons, it seemed to Maryam.

Maryam herself didn't see them again till January, when they came to Susan's first birthday party. They brought Jin-Ho in full Korean costume a brilliant kimono-like affair and a pointed hat with a chin strap and little embroidered cloth shoes and they stood around looking interested but slightly lost in the sea of Iranian relatives. Maryam stepped forward to take them under her wing. She complimented Jin-Ho's hat and she showed them where to put their coats and she explained just who was who. Those are Ziba's parents; they live in Washington. And there is her brother Hassan from Los Angeles; her brother Ali, also from Los Angeles… Ziba has seven brothers, can you imagine? Four of them are here today.

And which are from your side, Maryam? Bitsy asked.

Oh, well, none. Most of my family is still in Tehran. They don't visit very often.

She poured them each a cup of hot cider and then led them through the crowd, pausing here and there to introduce them. Whenever possible she singled out non-Iranians a next-door neighbor and a woman from Sami's office because Brad was carrying Jin-Ho on one arm and you never knew what Ziba's relations might take it into their heads to say. (In L. A. we have plastic surgeons who make Chinese people's eyes look just as good as Western, she'd heard Ali's wife tell Ziba that morning. I can get you some names, if you like.)

To be honest, the Hakimis were only one generation removed from the bazaar. Maryam's family would never even have met them, if they were back home.

It was the food that put the Donaldsons at ease, finally. They gasped when they saw the buffet table, with its multiple main dishes and its array of side dishes and salads. They wanted to know the names of everything, and when Bitsy learned that Maryam had cooked it all she inquired almost shyly if she might have some of the recipes. Well, of course, Maryam said. They're in any Iranian cookbook. By now she was aware that Americans thought recipes were a matter of creative invention. They could serve a different meal every day for a year without repeating themselves ItalianAmerican one day and Tex-Mex the next and Asian fusion the next and it always surprised them that other countries ate such a predictable menu.

Maryam, Bitsy said, was Ziba's family very upset when they heard that she and Sami were adopting?

Not at all; why do you ask? Maryam said crisply. (Astonishing, what people asked!) Now, this is a dish customarily served at weddings, she said. Chicken with almonds and orange peel. You must be sure to try some.

Bitsy was filling a single plate with double portions, since Brad was carrying Jin-Ho. She took a spoonful of the wedding dish and said, Brad's parents had a little trouble with it. Not mine; mine were all for it. But Brad was an only child and his folks were more, I don't know; maybe they were worried about passing on the bloodline or something. She tucked a piece of flatbread matter-of-factly into her pocket. (She was wearing a handwoven sort of peasant smock in shades of blue. No more black and white, Maryam noticed.) Of course, now they just adore Jin-Ho, she said. They're just as sweet as they could be with her. She paused to look at Maryam. And you're very close to Susan, I know from Ziba.

Yes, was all Maryam said, but she couldn't resist sending Susan a glance across the room. Susan wore a rosebud-print dress her other grandma had bought at a fancy shop in Georgetown, and the pale pink made her black hair and black eyes even more startlingly beautiful.

All the American guests were carrying their plates into the living room, while all the Iranian guests remained standing around the buffet table. Every time she saw this, Maryam tried to decide: were the Americans more greedy for rushing off into private corners and huddling possessively over their food, or were the Iranians more greedy for staying close to the source as they ate while other guests, not yet served, did their best to reach in between them? In any case, she knew enough to lead the Donaldsons into the living room. She saw to it that they were seated on the floor around the coffee table, since all of the chairs were taken, and then she went to the kitchen to fetch a bib for Jin-Ho. When she came back, Brad and Bitsy had struck up a conversation with the next-door neighbor, who was sitting on the couch breast-feeding her baby. You can never begin too young, Bitsy was saying. I'm talking about the mother-infant exercise program, she told Maryam. It's not only good for their muscles but it also develops the brain. Something about hand-eye coordination, I believe.

Obviously, she had settled in. Maryam tied the bib around JinHo's neck and went off to see who else needed tending.

It was an excess of politeness that led Maryam to invite the Donald-sons to an Iranian New Year's dinner that spring. In fact, she had more or less stopped celebrating the New Year. Sami and Ziba always went over to Washington, where Ziba's parents gave a gigantic party attended by throngs of bejeweled and perfumed guests people much more newly arrived than Maryam and really not her type. This year was no exception, but Ziba told Maryam that at some point after the actual New Year's, she would love to serve the Donaldsons a few of the traditional dishes. They so much enjoyed what they ate at Susan's birthday party, she said. I was thinking we could ask Brad and Bitsy's parents, too, and my parents if they're free. We could set up a Haftseen table and make perhaps a morgh polo. . well, you would make it, but I would help as much as possible. Would you be willing?

Maryam would have been more than willing, ordinarily, but now she felt an inner pinch of resistance. Why should they have to put on these ethnic demonstrations? Let the Donaldsons go to the Smithsonian for that! she thought peevishly. Let them read National Geographic! All she said to Ziba, though, was, Won't it be too much for you, on top of your weekend in Washington?

Too much? Why, no, Ziba said. Or… are you saying it's too much for you?

Certainly not. I'm not the one going to Washington! But the Haftseen table, for instance. It would need to be set up ahead of time, and you will both be away.

There was no reason whatsoever that the table should be set up ahead of time. And anyhow, they were free to schedule this for any date they liked. Surely Ziba must have realized that Maryam was just inventing excuses, but she drew the wrong conclusion. She said, Oh! You prefer to give the dinner at your house?

My house? Well, but Of course! I should have thought! It's just that our house has more room. If you prefer your house, though. .

Well, it's true that my house is quite small, Maryam said. But you're the one who's cooking. You should get to choose.

You'll be doing the rest of it, though the decorating, the cleaning up afterward. Your house makes more sense.

No, that's okay, Ziba said. We'll use your house. That will be just fine.

So Maryam invited the Donaldsons to her house.

Ten days before the party, Sami took her to Rockville for some of the more exotic ingredients. (It was a longer trip than she felt comfortable driving alone.) Traffic on I-95 was bumper to bumper, and Sami muttered under his breath whenever the stream of red taillights lit up in front of them. We should just be glad this place is as close as it is, Maryam told him. When I first came to this country, your grandmother had to mail most of my spices from Iran.

She could see those parcels still, clumsily stitched-together cloth bundles bulging with sumac and dried fenugreek leaves and tiny, blackened dried limes, the homemade cardboard address tags hand-lettered in her mother's shaky English. What we couldn't get shipped, we cheated on, she said. We traded around our secret tricks, the other wives and I. Pomegranate sauce made with frozen concentrated Welch's grape juice and tinned pumpkin-pie filling; I remember that one. Yogurt curd made with skim milk and goat cheese whirled in the blender.

In those days, all of their friends had been Iranian, all more or less in the same situation as Maryam and Kiyan. (At one of their big poker parties a wife could call, Agha doctor! and every man in the room could answer, Yes?) Where were those people now? Well, many had gone back home, of course. Others had moved on to other American cities. But some, she knew, remained right here in Baltimore; only she had lost touch with them. Politics had increasingly complicated matters, for one thing. Who supported the Shah? Who did not? Then after the Revolution you could be sure that most of the new arrivals had definitely supported the Shah, had perhaps even held high positions with the secret police, and it was wiser to avoid them altogether. Besides, Kiyan was dead by then and she no longer felt comfortable in that two-by-two social circle.

If only your father had lived to see the Shah overthrown! she said to Sami. He would have been so happy.

For about three and a half minutes, Sami said.

Well, yes.

He would hate to hear what's going on there now.

Yes, of course.

She'd been listening to music from home one day on Kiyan's old shortwave radio while she ironed. Already there'd been public demonstrations and rumors of unrest, but even the experts had been unable to predict the outcome. And then in midnote the music had stopped and there was a long silence, broken at last by a man announcing, quietly and levelly, This is the voice of the Revolution. A thrill had run up her spine and tears had filled her eyes, and she had set down her iron and said, out loud, Oh, Kiyan! Do you hear that?

What's going on there now would break his heart, she told Sami. Sometimes, you know what? I think the people who are dead are lucky.

Whoa! Sami said. Maryam glanced reflexively toward the traffic ahead, expecting some emergency. But no, this seemed to be one of those exaggerated reactions you saw so often in young people. No way, Mom! Hold on there!

Oh, I don't mean that literally. But what would he say, Sami? He loved his country! He always meant for us to go back there someday.

Thank God we didn't, Sami said, and he flicked his turn signal on and swung sharply into the fast lane as if the very thought made him angry.

He had never been to Iran himself. The one time since his birth that Maryam had gone back, Sami was already grown and married and working for Peacock Homes, and he had claimed he couldn't get away. He had no interest, was the real reason. She looked over at him sadly, at his large, curved nose so like Kiyan's and his endearing little spectacles. Now he would probably never go, and certainly not with her, because she had resolved not to return after that last visit. It wasn't the restrictions, so much the funereal long black coat she'd had to wear and the unbecoming headscarf but the absence of so many of the people she had loved. Of course she had been told about their deaths as they occurred (her mother, her great-aunts, her aunts and some of her uncles, each loss reported one by one in roundabout, tactful terms on thin blue aerogram paper or, in later years, over the telephone). But underneath, it seemed, she had managed not to realize fully until there she was, back in the family compound, and where was her mother? Where was her cluster of aunts clucking and bustling and chortling like a flock of little gray hens? And then at the airport when she was leaving there'd been a problem with her exit visa, something inconsequential that was settled fairly easily by a cousin with connections, but she had felt a sense of panic that was almost suffocating. She had felt like a bird beating its wings inside its cage. Let me out, let me out, let me out! And she'd never been back.

In the grocery store, where she and Sami had to struggle through a crowd of other Iranians shopping for their New Year's parties, she couldn't help asking, Who are these people? The children were using the familiar you when speaking to their parents; they were loud and unruly and disrespectful. The teenage girls were showing bare midriffs. The customers nearest the counter were pushing and shoving. This is just… distressing! she told Sami, but he surprised her by snapping, Oh, Mom, get off your high horse!

Excuse me? she said, truly not sure she had heard right.

Why should they act any better than Americans? he demanded. They're only behaving like everyone else, Mom; so quit judging.

Her first impulse was to snap back. Was it so wrong to expect her countrymen to set a good example? But she counted to ten before she spoke (a tactic she had learned during his adolescence) and then decided not to speak at all. Instead she proceeded down the aisle in silence, dropping cellophane packets of herbs and dried fruits into the basket he was carrying for her. She paused before a bin of wheat kernels, and Sami said, Will there be time enough to sprout them? There was plenty of time, as he knew full well. He must be asking only to make amends. So she said, Well, I think there will be. What's your opinion? and after that they were all right again.

She did judge. She knew that. Over the years she had become more and more critical, perhaps because of living alone for so long. She would have to watch herself. She made a point of smiling at the next person who jostled her, a woman with short hair dyed the color of a copper skillet, and when the woman smiled back it turned out she had a single, deep groove at the outer corner of each eye just like Aunt Minou's, and Maryam felt a rush of affection for her.

The Donaldsons had been invited for lunch on a Sunday that fell a full eight days after Ziba's parents' party; so there was less reason than ever for Maryam to host the event at her house. By now, though, she was resigned. She cooked the whole week before, a dish or two a day. She set up the Haftseen table in the living room the seven traditional objects, including a vibrant little putting green of sprouted wheat kernels, artfully arranged on her best embroidered cloth. And Sunday morning she rose before dawn to make the final preparations. The only other windows alight were in houses where there were small babies. The only sounds were the birds, a clamor of new and different songs now that spring was here. She padded around the kitchen barefoot, wearing muslin pants and a long-tailed shirt that used to belong to Sami. Her tea cooled on the counter as she rinsed the rice and set it to soak, and climbed on a stool to fetch down her trays, and snipped the stems of the yellow tulips that had been waiting overnight in buckets on the back porch. By now the sun was rising, and through the open window she heard the newspaper carrier's squeaky-braked van and then the slap of the Baltimore Sun against her front step. She brought the paper into the kitchen to read with her second cup of tea. From where she sat she could see into the dining room, where the silver gleamed on the table and the stemware sparkled and the tulips marched down the center in a row of slim glass vases. She loved this time before a party when the napkins had not yet been crumpled or the quiet shattered.

At twelve-thirty, freshly bathed and dressed in narrow black trousers and a white silk tunic, she was standing at her front door to welcome Sami and Ziba. They came early to help with last-minute preparations, although, as Sami pointed out, she had left them nothing to do. No, but this way I get to have a little visit with Susan, she said. Susan was a very competent walker by now, and the minute Sami set her down she made a beeline for the basket where Maryam kept her toys. Her hair had grown long enough that it fell in her eyes if they didn't tie it up into a sort of vertical sprout on top of her head. It wisped around her little shell ears and trailed in thin strands down the back of her flower-stem neck. Susiejune, Ziba told her, say, 'Hi, Mari — june!' Say, 'Hello, Mari — june!'

Mari — june, Susan said obligingly, only it came out more like Mudge. She gave Maryam one of her tucked smiles, as if she knew exactly how clever she'd been.

Ziba wanted to fiddle and fidget Is there anything we can do? Should Sami open the wine? Which tablecloth did you use? but Maryam told her it was all taken care of. Have a seat, she said. Tell me what you'd like to drink.

Ziba didn't answer because she was pummeling cushions, even nudging Sami aside so she could get to the one he was sitting against. She was nervous, Maryam supposed. She had dressed up a little too much for daytime, in the same shiny turquoise mini-dress she'd worn to her parents' party, and two circles of rouge on her cheeks made her seem feverish. Probably she was comparing Maryam's house to her own Maryam's too-small living room and traditional, rather dowdy furniture overlaid with paisley scarves and little Iranian trinkets and finding it lacking. Susan, put that back! she said when Susan hauled out a plush dog. We can't have toys scattered all over the place when guests are coming!

Oh, why not? Jin-Ho will want to play too, Maryam told her; and Sami, lazily twirling a string of clay prayer beads he'd picked up from the coffee table, said, Relax, Zee. Settle down.

She made a cross little puffing sound and flung herself into a chair.

It didn't help that the next arrivals were Ziba's parents. They were a bit early, having misjudged the travel time from Washington, and when Mrs. Hakimi apologized to Maryam in Farsi (I'm very sorry; I ask your forgiveness; I told Mustafa we should just drive around a bit but he said), Ziba cried, Mummy, please; you promised you'd speak English for this!

Mrs. Hakimi sent Maryam a rueful glance. She was a pleasant-looking woman with a plump, tired face, and she let her family walk all over her, Maryam had noticed especially her husband, who maintained the rigid posture of a military man although he'd made his money in business. He imported things. (Maryam wasn't sure what.) He had a bald yellow head and an enormous stomach that strained the vest of his gray sharkskin suit. Susie — june! he roared, and he pounced on Susan, who smiled shyly but curled over till she was practically a shrimp shape, and no wonder; Mr. Hakimi was a cheek-pincher. Pinch-pinch! with his big yellow fingers while Susan squirmed and looked around for Ziba.

I understand your party last week was a great success, Maryam told Mrs. Hakimi.

Oh, no, it was nothing. A very plain affair, Mrs. Hakimi said, and then she took a sudden swerve back into Farsi. I'm sure our meal today will be much more elegant, since you were the one who prepared it and no one else I know makes such delicious Her words came all in a rush, as if she hoped to get as much said as possible before she was apprehended; but Ziba said, Mummy! and Mrs. Hakimi broke off and looked at Maryam helplessly.

In Maryam's experience, it used to be the wives who adapted more quickly. Almost overnight they had decoded the native customs, mastered the ins and outs of supermarkets and car pools, grown confident and assertive while their husbands, buried in work, confined their new English to medical terms or the vocabulary of seminar rooms. The men had depended on the women, back then, to negotiate the practical world for them; but in the case of the Hakimis the situation seemed to be reversed. When Brad's parents arrived in their spring outfits the colors of Easter eggs, proclaiming their names vivaciously before Maryam could introduce them, Mrs. Hakimi only smiled at her lap and shrank lower in her chair. It was Mr. Hakimi who assumed command of the conversation. So you are the paternal grandparents! May I say how pleased we are to meet you! And what do you do for a living, Lou?

Why, I'm an attorney, retired! Lou said, nearly matching Mr. Hakimi's hearty tone. The wife and I are leisure folk now. We take a lot of cruises, golfing trips; I'm sure you've heard of Elder-hostel…

Maryam excused herself and went off to check on dinner. She lowered one flame, raised another, and then allowed herself a little spell of gazing out the kitchen window before the sound of the doorbell pulled her away. When she returned to the living room Brad and Bitsy were just coming in, Brad carrying Jin-Ho, while Bitsy's parents followed at some distance. Connie was having a little trouble with the steps. Dave cupped a palm beneath her elbow as she struggled to lift one foot to meet the other. Oh, I'm sorry, Maryam said, crossing the porch to greet her. I should have told you to come in the back.

But Connie said, Nonsense, I need the exercise, and she squeezed both of Maryam's hands in hers. I can't tell you how I've been looking forward to this, she said. At long last she had given up her baseball cap. Her scalp was thinly furred with a half inch of gray hair, very fine and soft-looking, and she wore a navy cotton dress that seemed too big for her. When she reached the door, she paused and took a deep breath as if she were bracing herself. Then she plunged into the living room. You must be Ziba's parents! she cried. Hello! I'm Connie Dickinson, and this is my husband, Dave! Hi, Pat! Hi, Lou!

There was a flurry of greetings and compliments (Pat's new hair color, Bitsy's drawstring trousers), and then Dave asked about the Haftseen table, which gave Mr. Hakimi the chance to deliver a lecture. Haftseen means 'seven s's,' he began in a public sort of voice. We have here seven objects that start with the letter s. Dave and Connie nodded solemnly, while Bitsy prevented Jin-Ho from snatching the embroidered cloth off the table.

Now, hold on there! Lou said. Those hyacinths don't start with s!

Brad said, Dad That plate of grass doesn't start with s!

S in our language, Mr. Hakimi told him.

Oh. Aha. Very interesting.

Your house is charming, Maryam, Bitsy said. I love the mixture of textiles. I'm a weaver, you know, so of course I notice such things. She made another grab for Jin-Ho, this time picking her up. Did you bring all these rugs with you when you first came?

Oh, no, Maryam said. She laughed. When I first came, I brought a single carpetbag.

But a Persian carpetbag, I'll bet, in some fascinating pattern. Well, yes…

She had given away the carpetbag a month after she arrived, ashamed it wasn't Samsonite. Oh, in those days she wouldn't have brought rugs from home even if she'd had the space. She'd wanted everything sleek and modern, solid-colored, preferably beige American-American, as Kiyan used to say. Both of them had so admired the Western style of decorating. Only later did she understand that they had embraced the worst of the style the cheap beige plastic dinnerware, the wasteland of bland beige carpeting, the chairs upholstered in beige synthetics shot through with metallic threads.

Now it was Dave carrying on the what-do-you-do conversation. He had just informed Mr. Hakimi that he was a physics teacher, and while Maryam circled the room with soft drinks and wine and (for Mr. Hakimi) whisky on the rocks, she learned that Connie taught high school English and Brad taught biology. So perhaps it was only natural that this family felt entitled to tell other people how to do things. Could genes determine occupations, even? she wondered as she returned to the kitchen.

The rice was beginning to send out its browned-butter, popcorn smell. She moved the pot to the sink and switched off the burner. From the living room she heard Mr. Hakimi introducing the next topic: politics, specifically Iranian politics the long, noble history of Iran and its bitter end in the Revolution. Just as well she was out of sight; she avoided discussing such matters with any of Ziba's relatives. She ran cold water into the sink and waited for the pot to stop steaming, although she could easily have left it unattended. When she heard small, uneven footsteps behind her, she was delighted. Susie june! she cried, turning, and Susan smiled and raised both arms and said, Up? She enunciated very carefully, as if she were aware that she was working to learn a language. Maryam picked her up and laid her face against Susan's soft cheek. Then Jin-Ho toddled in with a toy truck clasped to her chest and said, Kack? Kack? and Maryam took a guess and went to the cupboard for Triscuits. Cracker, she said, handing one to each child. Thank you, Mari june! and she set Susan down. Susan and Jin-Ho started rolling the truck between them, each clutching a Triscuit in one hand and squatting in that boneless way that only small children can manage, feet set flat and wide apart and bottoms an inch from the floor. They were such a pleasure to watch. Maryam could have stood there all afternoon just drinking in the sight of them.

As it turned out, that was the high point of the party. By the time the guests were seated at the table, both little girls had gone past their nap times. Susan was carried wailing to the crib Maryam kept for her upstairs, while Jin-Ho stuck it out in her mother's lap, growing steadily crankier and squirmier and violently averting her face from the morsels of food Bitsy offered.

And it wasn't only the children who were fractious. First Pat took it upon herself to suggest that Connie might like to try wrapping her head in a pretty silk scarf (did even the in-laws in this family feel free to give advice to each other?), and Connie flushed and looked unhappy, and Dave said, Thank you, Pat, but I think Connie's beautiful just the way she is, and Pat said, Oh! Why! Of course! I never meant! Then Bitsy, apparently hoping to smooth things over, said, While we're speaking of fashions, Ziba, Susan's little topknot was darling, and Ziba said, Yes, I'm trying to get her hair out of her eyes, and Bitsy said, Ah, well, Jin-Ho doesn't have that problem because we're keeping the style she came with. I guess we just don't feel we should Americanize her.

Americanize! Ziba said. We're not Americanizing! (As if anything really could Americanize a person, Maryam thought, having watched too many foreigners try to look natural in blue jeans.) It must be that Ziba still felt insecure around the Donaldsons, because ordinarily she would not have bristled like that.

And when Mr. Hakimi took his own stab at peacemaking, he just made the situation worse. But! We're neglecting our hostess! he bellowed. This is such excellent food, my dear madam, and you were so kind to relieve Ziba of the burden of entertaining!

Ziba said, It wasn't a burden! What are you talking about? We could have had it at our house! I was longing to have it at our house!

Maryam said, You were?

We have more room at our house! I told you that! We wouldn't need to squeeze around the table on desk chairs and porch chairs and kitchen chairs!

Maryam said, But I thought you said Now she couldn't remember what either one of them had said. She had trouble reconstructing the whole conversation. All she knew was that once again, they must both have been too polite, too please-I-insist and whichever-you-prefer. Well, she said finally. I wish I had known.

Connie set down her fork and leaned across the table to touch Maryam's hand. In any case, it's a lovely party, she said.

Thank you, Maryam told her.

And besides, Bitsy chimed in, this way we get to see your house, and all your beautiful things! Tell me, Maryam; I'm dying to know: what was in that one carpetbag you brought? What does a person choose to take with her, when she's leaving her country for good?

Gratefully, Maryam turned her thoughts to the carpetbag. A silk peignoir set, she remembered. And two sets of lacy lingerie hand-sewn by Aunt Eshi's seamstress… She smiled and shook her head. It wasn't how you imagine, she told Bitsy. I was a brand-new bride. I was thinking about how I looked, not my house.

A bride! You came over as a bride?

I had been married just one day when I boarded the airplane, Maryam said.

So the trip to America was your honeymoon! How romantic! From his place at the head of the table, Sami said, Now, Mom. Tell the whole story.

Oh, tell! Bitsy said, and Lou tapped his water glass with his knife. Jin-Ho, who was just nodding off, started a bit and then resettled her head against her mother's shoulder.

Maryam said, There is no story.

Yes, there is, Sami said. He turned to the others. She made that so-called honeymoon trip alone, he said. My dad was already over here. She had a proxy wedding all by herself and joined him afterward.

Is that true? Pat asked her. You had a wedding without the groom? But how did that work?

Show them the photo, Sami told Maryam.

Oh, Sami, they don't want to see the photo, she said, and she ignored their protests (Yes, we do! Show us, Maryam!) and rose to pick up the platter of stuffed grape leaves. Would anyone care for seconds? she asked.

A photo of Mom in her wedding dress, Sami said, standing alone beside a long table you can hardly see for the presents. It looks as if she's marrying the presents.

Maryam said, Well, I wouldn't say. . There was something in his tone that hurt her feelings. Something amused; that was it. And perhaps Mr. Hakimi felt it too, because he cleared his throat and said, In fact many, many girls married that way at the time. All those young men who went to America, don't you know, or Germany or France… Of course they needed wives, by and by. It was a reasonable solution.

But how did you court at such long distance? Pat asked Maryam.

Court! Sami said. He laughed. They didn't. The marriage was arranged.

Maryam sensed a new alertness around the table, but she didn't look up from the platter she stood holding in both hands. No one had taken seconds. Maybe they had disliked the grape leaves. Maybe they had disliked the whole meal.

So you see, Sami told Bitsy, it wasn't as romantic as you think.

Maryam said, Oh, Sami. She spoke very gently, to hide the outrage in her voice. You can't know everything about it, she said. And then she turned away, with as much dignity as possible, and carried the grape leaves out of the room and shut the swinging door behind her.

In the kitchen, she filled the kettle with water for tea. Obviously she should clear the table before she served the pastries and fruit, but she wasn't quite ready yet to go back and face the others. She lit the burner beneath the kettle and then remained at the stove, her arms folded tightly across her chest, her eyes stinging with tears.

When Kiyan had told her, for instance, that her hair smelled like an Armenian church: what could Sami know about that?

The swinging door opened slowly and Connie walked through, carrying two plates. Maryam said, Please, you mustn't, and took the plates from her. You'll tire yourself, she said.

Connie said, That's okay; I wanted to stretch my legs. Instead of going back to the dining room, she settled on the stool and watched Maryam scrape the plates. Aren't family gatherings wearing? she said. All those people who know you so well, they think they can say just anything.

It's true, Maryam said. She began fussing with the stacks of soiled cookware that cluttered her one small counter. While she was facing away from Connie, she dabbed hurriedly at the tip of her nose. And really they don't know you so well, she said.

You're right; they don't know the half of it, Connie agreed. She turned toward the swinging door, where her husband was just entering with two more plates. We're commiserating about family gatherings, she told him.

Ah, yes, dreadful affairs, Dave said, and he went straight to the garbage bin in a familiar way and started scraping the plates. Maryam never could get used to men helping out in the kitchen. Where was Ziba? Wasn't it Ziba who should be doing this? Families in general, Dave was saying. They're vastly overrated.

Connie tsked and gave him a friendly swat.

And holding this dinner at my house, Maryam went on (reminded by thoughts of Ziba). I never asked to do that! I mean… forgive me; of course I'm pleased to have you, but We understand, Dave told her. Probably he didn't understand, but he was nice enough to nod his woolly gray head in a sympathetic manner, and Connie nodded too and said, It's funny how we get maneuvered into these things.

We're too careful with each other, Ziba and I, Maryam said. She turned toward the stove and uncovered the kettle to see if the water was boiling. Our family is not very good at saying what we want. Sometimes we end up doing what none of us wants, I suspect, just because we think it would satisfy the others.

Be rude, like us, Dave suggested, and he draped an arm around Connie's shoulders and winked at Maryam. She had to laugh.

Then Connie and Dave returned to the dining room for more plates, and Maryam spooned tea leaves into her best china teapot. She did feel better now. There was something consoling about those two. She poured boiling water into the teapot and replaced the lid and then balanced the teapot on top of the kettle.

Maybe the hiss of the simmering water was what brought back, all at once, a scene from the earliest days of her marriage. Whenever she had felt particularly lonesome, she remembered, she used to set a tumbler of club soda on her nightstand. She used to go to sleep listening to the bubbles bounce against the glass with a faint, steady, peaceful whispering sound that had reminded her of the fountain in her family's courtyard back home.

It was Bitsy who thought up the idea of an Arrival Party. That was what she called it, right off, so that Brad had to ask, A what, hon? Come again?

A party to commemorate the date the girls arrived, she told him. In two weeks it will be a year; can you believe it? Saturday, August fifteenth. We ought to mark the occasion.

Would you be up to it, with your mother?

Bitsy's mother had suffered a setback a whole new tumor, this time involving her liver. They'd had a hard couple of months. But Bitsy said, It would do me good. It would do us all good! Get our minds off our troubles. And we'd confine it to the two families; no nonrelatives. Make it kind of like a birthday party. A daytime event, right after the girls' naps when they're at their best, and I wouldn't serve a full meal, only dessert.

Maybe a Korean dessert! Brad said.

Oh. Well.

Wouldn't that be neat?

I checked Korean desserts on the Internet, Bitsy told him. Spinach cookies, fried glutinous rice…

Brad started looking worried.

She said, I was thinking maybe a sheet cake frosted like an American flag.

That's a great idea!

With candles? Or one candle, for one year. But absolutely no presents; remind me to tell the Yazdans that. They're always bringing presents. And we might sing some sort of song together. There must be a suitable song about waiting for someone's arrival.

There's 'She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain,' Brad said.

Well… and the girls can wear Korean outfits. Shall we offer to lend Susan a sagusam? You can be sure she doesn't own one.

That would be good.

We could have a ceremony, sort of. The girls would be in another room; we'd light the cake and start singing; they would walk through the door hand in hand… just like arriving all over again. Don't you think?

And, hey! Brad said. We could show the video!

Perfect! The video, Bitsy said.

Her brother Mac had taken all the different airport videos to be edited into a single tape. Since then the tape had sat on a shelf there never seemed to be time to watch even the news, anymore but this was their chance to view it. Maybe at the end of the party, to wind things up, Bitsy said. Is this all too hokey, maybe?

Not a bit.

You're sure, now. You would tell me if it was.

You couldn't be hokey if you tried, Brad said.

The nice thing was, he meant it. She knew that. He had this notion that she could do no wrong. It was Bitsy says this and Bitsy says that and Let's ask Bitsy, shall we? She took his face between her hands and leaned forward to give him a kiss.

Bitsy never liked for this to get around, but Brad was not her first husband. Her first husband had been Stephen Bartholomew, the only son of her parents' oldest friends. Bitsy's parents and Stephen's parents had double-dated all the way through Swarthmore and kept devotedly in touch ever since, even though the Bartholomews lived clear across the country in Portland, Oregon. Bitsy had seen Stephen precisely twice in her life both times when she was too young to remember before they entered Swarthmore themselves; but the idea was, they were bound to be instant soulmates. The first letter her mother wrote her, the first week of Bitsy's freshman year, began with Have you met Stephen yet? And no doubt Stephen's mother was asking him the same thing.

Of course they did meet, by and by, and to nobody's surprise they promptly fell in love. He was an ethereally beautiful boy with a narrow, calm face and sea-gray eyes. She was plainer but a born leader, the campus star, outspoken and impassioned. They went through four years of college as an established, recognized couple, although they had such different interests (chemistry for him and English for her, not to mention her various political activities) that it was a struggle to find the time to be together. Christmas of their senior year they became engaged, and they married the next June, the day after graduation, and moved to Baltimore, where Stephen had a fellowship at Hopkins and Bitsy went to work on her education credits at College Park.

Then she met Brad.

Or no, first she started noticing Stephen's flaws. Actually, which did come first? Now she couldn't say. But she remembered realizing one day that Stephen's most consistent emotion was disapproval. Oh, that narrow face of his was more significant than she'd guessed! This was a man who could get all worked up about the phrase too simplistic, for Lord's sake; a man who refused to be moved by a haunting rendition of I Wonder As I Wander because he was offended by the ungrammatical construction of people like you and like I. I mean, where will it all end? was his favorite question, and more and more he seemed to ask it about Bitsy herself her tendency to procrastinate, her offhand housekeeping methods, her increasingly lackadaisical attitude toward her studies. He saw the rest of the world as a sliding heap of ever-sinking standards, and it made him frown and fidget; it made him clear his throat in an edgy, portentous manner that drove her to distraction.

Well, certainly a person could have worse faults than that. It was not enough to justify divorcing him. But the fact was, they had married without much more than an acquaintanceship beforehand. She saw that belatedly. They had been smitten with the mere idea of each other two obedient children trying too hard to please their parents and had spent four years keeping to opposite sides of the campus just so they wouldn't have to find out how very ill-suited they were. (Wasn't their marriage almost arranged, really? Was it so different from Maryam Yazdan's? Maryam's might have been happier, even. Bitsy would have loved to ask about that.)

So anyway, along came genial, contented, easygoing Brad with his fuzzy haircut and his loopy smile and his absolute faith that she was the most wonderful person in the world. They met at a campus rally for John Anderson; Bitsy was very gung-ho for Anderson but Brad thought he might stick with Carter. He just wasn't sure. She reasoned with him, and went out for coffee with him later to reason some more. He hung on her every word. They invented further excuses to meet. (Wouldn't voting Independent mean throwing his vote in the garbage? Hmm? What was her honest opinion?) She had never known anybody so trustful. Even what others might disparage his gee-whiz style of speech, his beginnings of a beer belly warmed her heart.

Every time they were out in public she worried he would find some other woman more attractive. How could he not? She knew she was no beauty. That girl behind the counter at their favorite coffeehouse, for instance: she was so much bustier than Bitsy, but it wasn't only that; she was so much softer, more yielding somehow. And furthermore, she was single! Then the girl said, as she refilled their cups, I am completely and totally bushed, and Bitsy felt a vindictive thrill because that was such a redundant, ignorant-sounding phrase completely and totally, good grief! until she realized that Brad hadn't even noticed it. He wouldn't notice; he lacked that critical quality. But never mind: he was looking only at Bitsy anyhow. His eyes were the same shade of blue as a baby's receiving blanket, just that pure and mild.

She told him her marriage had been over for months, and he shouldn't give it a thought. She was shameless, ruthless, single-minded, without a shred of conscience. She spent the night in his sweatsock-smelling bachelor apartment and didn't even bother offering Stephen an alibi. And when Brad accepted a teaching job in Baltimore she dropped her education courses flat and never set foot in College Park again.

Of course, both her parents and Stephen's were shocked when they heard the news. Not so much Stephen himself; he seemed more relieved than anything else. But their parents couldn't believe that such a perfect match had not worked out. They blamed it on adjustment problems (a full year after the wedding). Her mother asked her, privately, whether she'd given any thought to the great, great importance of intellectual compatibility in a marriage. And Brad's parents, well. The less said about them, the better. You could tell they thought their son had lost his mind. Such a gangling, graceless girl, not to mention already married and one year older than he and politically ridiculous! The Donaldsons voted Republican. They lived in Guilford. When they got together with Bitsy's parents, even now, you could see them open their mouths and draw in their breath and then fail to find a single subject they could imagine discussing with such people.

Bitsy had assumed that as soon as Brad's parents became grandparents, things would ease up. But then they didn't become grandparents. (One more strike against Bitsy.) She spent fifteen years trying to get pregnant while other women, heedlessly lucky women, cruised blithely past her in the supermarket with grocery carts full of children. She endured every possible test and grueling medical procedure, and more than once it was on the tip of her tongue to ask her doctors, Could this be my doing? I don't mean just my body's doing; I mean, is it my nature? Am I not soft enough, not receptive enough a woman who ditched her first husband without the least little twinge?

Absurd, of course. And see how well it had all turned out! They had their precious Jin-Ho, the most perfect daughter imaginable. And a child in need, besides an opportunity to do good in this world.

When Bitsy looked back on Jin-Ho's arrival, it didn't seem like a first meeting. It seemed that Jin-Ho had been traveling toward them all along and Bitsy's barrenness had been part of the plan, foreordained so that they could have their true daughter. Oh, it's you! Welcome home! Bitsy had thought when she first saw that robust little face, and she had held out her arms.

But she supposed no one would understand if she called this a Reunion Party.

Bitsy's two brothers were younger than she, but their children were half-grown. (That used to rankle, a bit.) Mac and Laura had a teenage son a certified genius, antisocial and geeky and a disturbingly sexy blond ten-year-old daughter. Abe and Jeannine had three girls, ages eight, nine, and eleven but alike enough, in looks and in temperament, that they could have been triplets. Poor Brad was forever mixing up their names.

On the afternoon of the party, these two families arrived before anyone else and even before the specified time by a good half hour or so, pulling up in front of the house one after the other as if they had traveled in tandem, although they lived in opposite directions. At first Bitsy felt annoyed; she was still trying to stuff Jin-Ho into her costume, and the coffee urn had not been started yet or the cake set out on the table. Then she wondered if they had come with some agenda in mind. The wives seemed uncharacteristically eager to steer the children toward the TV room, and once the grownups were settled in the living room, Abe (the younger one) kept looking expectantly at Mac. For some reason, Bitsy felt no particular need to help them out. In fact, at the very moment that Mac said, So! Well, ah. Since we're all here, she was seized by the urge to head him off. She said, You know what I did this morning?

Everyone looked at her.

I listened to the audiotape we made at the airport that night. Goodness, it seems long ago! I'm talking into the mike; I'm saying, 'Everybody's gathered around; everybody's brought presents. Mac and Laura are here, and Abe and Jeannine.' Although actually, she had not referred to them by name. She was just trying to make it more interesting. I sounded so shaky and scared! Well, face it: I was scared to death. I thought, What if it turns out that I can't warm to this child? What if well, we'd seen that one photo and we already knew she was beautiful, but what if in person she was somehow off-putting or unappealing? These things can happen, you know! Although no one likes to admit it. And look at Susan. Of course she's a darling, but I've always wondered, didn't the Yazdans feel maybe the faintest bit disappointed when they saw how homely she was? With that sallow skin and bald forehead? And then later come to love her; I don't mean we wouldn't have loved her, but still… Oh, I was a nervous wreck that day! And you can hear it in my voice. Then I say, 'Oh! She's here! Oh, she's lovely!' and there's this clattering sound; that would be me letting go of the tape recorder Say, maybe we should play that tape today at the party! Brad said.

Well, I don't know; I think I'd feel sort of stupid if other people heard it.

Aw, hon, it wouldn't be stupid. It would be sweet.

Bitsy, Laura said in a declarative tone. (She was a grade-school principal; she was accustomed to taking charge.) We need to have a talk about your parents.

My parents?

Laura looked at Mac. He straightened and said, Right. Mom and Dad. I guess we don't have to tell you that Mom seems to be sinking.

I'll say you don't have to tell me!

Her brothers and their wives had not been as attentive as they might have been, in Bitsy's opinion. She directed a special glare toward Jeannine, who had once declined to drive Connie to a chemo appointment because her youngest had a playdate.

And you can see that it's wearing on Dad, Mac went on. This summer's been bad enough, but with classes starting in September, well, I'm not sure how he's going to manage. He's talking about taking early retirement. But you know how much he loves teaching. I'd hate to see him give that up just when… just before he's going to need something to do with his days, you know? We think he ought to hire some kind of nursing help for Mom.

Oh, Bitsy said. She was relieved. She had worried they might ask her to be the nurse, or even to take her mother into her house.

But for sure they're both going to argue. Dad will say he wants to care for Mom on his own. Mom will say she doesn't need any care.

She's so obstinate! Laura burst out. Doesn't she realize how difficult she makes things? People who refuse to accept their limitations: oh, it's all very admirable, all very brave and heroic, but in practical terms it's infuriating! Getting into fixes she can't get out of, refusing canes and walkers, insisting on going to places where the restroom's a hundred miles away and up three flights of stairs Bitsy knew exactly what she meant, but to hear it from a mere sister-in-law someone not even related, so efficient and professional in her cat's-eye glasses and square-cut pantsuit seemed an insult. She said, Oh, Laura, who knows what we'd do ourselves in her situation?

We'd bow gracefully to circumstance, I would hope, Laura snapped. Her husband sent her a warning glance and Abe started looking anxious, but she ignored them both. So, she said to Bitsy. Are we agreed? We offer to hire caretakers?

Givers, Bitsy said automatically.

Pardon?

Caregivers, is what they're called these days.

And around the clock, don't you agree? So your dad won't have to get up nights.

How much would that cost, exactly? Brad asked. I mean, of course we do agree don't we, Bitsy? but wouldn't this cost an arm and a leg?

Not if we all chip in, Laura said.

Everyone looked at Bitsy.

She said, Well, of course we would chip in. But I don't think they'll accept it. And the issue isn't money, anyhow. I'm sure Dad makes enough money.

Yes, but offering to pay is a way of bringing up the subject, Laura told her. Here's what you do: say it's for your sake. Say you're losing sleep over this and it would make you feel better if you and your brothers could pay for some help.

Me? Bitsy asked. I'm supposed to say? What about the rest of you?

Well, naturally we'll back you up Back me up?

But then the doorbell rang and she sprang to her feet, glad for the interruption. This was supposed to be a party! A celebration for Jin-Ho! (Who had been hustled off to the TV room with the most minimal of greetings, just so the grownups could conspire together.)

On the porch she found Ziba's parents Mr. and Mrs. Hakimi, beaming, in stiff dark clothes. Mrs. Hakimi mutely held out a huge, extravagantly wrapped gift, contrary to all instructions, while Mr. Hakimi cried, Felicitations, Mrs. Donaldson! They were so exotic, so blessedly distant from the scritch-scratching irritation of the scene back in the living room. Bitsy said, Oh, what a pleasure to see you! and then she said, Please, it's Bitsy, and took the gift from Mrs. Hakimi and kissed her on the cheek. Mrs. Hakimi's cheek was as soft as an old velvet purse. Mr. Hakimi's parchment-colored head resembled an antique globe. They entered the house in a hesitant, respectful manner, even though the front hall was littered with toys and yesterday's Dyper Delyte delivery sat by the umbrella stand.

Such an occasion! Such a joyous occasion! Mr. Hakimi announced in the living-room doorway. It was like a stage direction. Immediately the men stood up and put on welcoming faces, and the sisters-in-law began stirring and bustling, and the children streamed in from the TV room clamoring for something to eat. The doorbell rang again, and again, and then again the Yazdans with Maryam, then Brad's parents, and last of all Bitsy's parents, her mother quite alert today and steady on her feet and it really did start to feel like a joyous occasion.

Why was it that Bitsy loved Sami and Ziba so? The two couples had little in common, other than their daughters. And the Yazdans were so much younger. Too much younger, it seemed at times. Sami had that very young habit of taking himself too seriously, although that could have been just his foreignness showing. (Even though his accent was dyed-in-the-wool Baltimore, something studiously, effortfully casual in his manner marked him as non-American.) And Ziba, with her noticeably manicured, dark red nails and her hennaed hair and two-tone lipstick: why, Bitsy herself had not bothered with such concerns in years! Or ever, as a matter of fact.

Even on issues pertaining to their daughter, the Yazdans took a very different approach. Imagine changing that charming name, Sooki, part of her native heritage, to plain old Susan! Su-zun Yazdun: it didn't even sound right. (Yaz-dan, Ziba had corrected her, when Bitsy once wondered aloud how well that really worked. Okay, but still. .) Not to mention the outfit Susan was wearing today, a party dress from one of those grandmother stores over in D. C. The sagusam Bitsy had lent her was lying now on the couch, shucked off as soon as everyone had had a chance to admire it. And their child-rearing philosophy in general: the working mother, the regimented bedtime, the singsong, fluty-voiced baby talk Su-SuSu! Susie june! as if Susan belonged to some whole other, less intelligent species of being.

Still, they were the first ones Bitsy thought of when she was in the mood for company. Let's call the Yazdans! See what they're up to. And Brad seemed to feel the same way. Maybe it had to do with the Yazdans' gentleness. They were so pliant and accepting; they lacked sharp edges. (Bitsy didn't include Maryam in this. Maryam could act very superior sometimes.) And also… well, wasn't it true that those women who'd actually given birth formed a complacent sort of sorority, with their talk of sonograms and labor pains and breast-feeding? None of Bitsy's other friends had adopted, as it happened. They were very supportive and all that, very diplomatic, but she could tell that underneath, they felt that to adopt was to settle for second-best. Oh, so many secret hurts and bruises lay behind this Arrival Party! And Sami and Ziba must have experienced them too.

Ziba had told her once that her parents believed that people who couldn't have children shouldn't have children; it wasn't meant to be. Destiny! Ziba had said with a laugh, but Bitsy had not laughed with her. Instead she had reached out and covered Ziba's hand with her own, and Ziba's eyes had flooded suddenly with tears.

Now the two little girls were rolling across the dining-room rug and giggling. They had started noticing each other lately. They were beginning to play together instead of back to back. And Sami was asking Brad how he liked his new Honda Civic, and Ziba was helping Bitsy set out the refreshments. It had become the custom for Ziba to be the one to make the tea when she was visiting. Surely the Yazdans could not actually taste the paper on a tea bag, but Ziba maintained that they could and so Bitsy kept a box of loose tea in her cupboard (a box she regularly had to discard because another thing the Yazdans could taste was old tea, in theory) and Ziba brewed it herself in a complicated process that involved a precarious tower of teapot on top of kettle and a periodic sniffing for the proper melting smell to the leaves. Jeannine and Laura were fascinated. They hovered around the stove, getting in everyone's way and asking questions. Shouldn't there be some easier method? This seems a little… makeshift. Why not just dump the leaves directly in the kettle? Streamline the operation? Ziba merely smiled. Bitsy felt secretly proud, as if some of the Yazdans' mystery had transferred itself to her.

The one boy cousin, Linwood, was asked to light the candle on the cake. Bitsy had thought this would make him feel more included. He was such an awkward creature, all Adam's apple and knobby joints, with thick, smudged glasses and too-short hair. But even stepping up to the table turned his face a deep red, and when he finally got a match lit he somehow managed to drop it as he was lurching toward the cake. Bitsy's father, who was closest, snuffed it out easily with one palm and said, No harm done, which wasn't quite true because a charred spot showed on the tablecloth, not that Bitsy cared about such things; but Abe's three daughters squealed as if he'd set the house on fire. God, Linwood, you're such a dork, his sister said, tossing her adult-looking mane of blond hair, and Laura said, That's quite enough out of you, young lady! and Linwood wheeled blindly and tried to escape through the ring of relatives, leading with his lowered head. It took a while for people to persuade him to try again.

Meanwhile, Brad was waiting out in the kitchen with Jin-Ho and Susan, listening for their entrance cue, but evidently neither child understood the situation. Bitsy could hear Susan asking, Mama? Mama? Just light the damn thing, Linwood, Mac said, and Laura said, Mac! and Linwood struck another match and lit the candle on his first try. It was fortunate there was just one candle. Bitsy was already calculating that next year, when there were two, the girls might be old enough to do it themselves with proper supervision, of course.

All right, everybody, Bitsy said, and she started singing. They'll be coming round the mountain when they come. . She had been searching till the very last minute for a more appropriate selection. There must be a song in grand opera about a long-awaited arrival. Or almost certainly in The Messiah, if that wasn't sacrilegious. But nothing had occurred to her, and this at least was a song the children knew. Everyone but the Hakimis (who were gamely smiling) joined her halfway through the first line even Linwood, in a mumbly undertone while Brad flung open the kitchen door and called, Ta-da! They're here! The two girls Jin-Ho resplendent in red-and-blue satin, Susan in pink organdy clung to his trouser legs and looked bewildered.

Oh, we'll all go out to meet them when they come, Bitsy sang. Come on, honey! she called to Jin-Ho. Come on, Susan! See your cake?

It was a beautiful cake a huge Stars and Stripes. The lady at the bakery counter thought we were just really, really late for the Fourth of July, Brad told Sami. The two of them were hoisting their daughters in their arms now so that they could have a view of the table. Abe stepped forward to aim his camera at them. You get in this too, he told Bitsy. You too, Ziba, get into the picture. Okay, all together now! Smile!

Everybody smiled (well, except for the girls, who still seemed baffled), and the camera flashed.

We'll let the cousins blow the candle out, Bitsy said. I'm not sure the girls are up to that yet. And Jeannine, if you would pour the tea, and Laura can serve the coffee, and I'll ask you to cut the cake, Pat. . For once, she refused to do everything on her own. She was celebrating the most important anniversary in her life (yes, even more important than the anniversary of her marriage), and she intended to enjoy it.

Predictably, Linwood held back from the candle-blowing, but the four girl cousins fell into the spirit of things, shoving each other and sputtering with laughter until more or less by chance the candle happened to go out. Then Brad's mother cut precise little squares of cake and Bitsy's father handed them around. He started with Bitsy's mother, probably out of solicitude, but she had not been able to eat much lately and she waved the plate aside. She was settled at the table in a ladder-back chair. The others remained on their feet, keeping to the small groups they felt most comfortable with, but Maryam pulled out the chair next to Connie and sat down also. I imagine tea would go well right now, Bitsy heard her say, and Connie said, Oh, you know, I believe it might. Maryam placed her own cup in front of Connie and turned to Jeannine for another, and Bitsy sent her a thankful smile even if Maryam didn't notice. Maryam was dressed in one of those super-stylish outfits she favored cigarette-legged white slacks and a black scoop-necked top that showed off her tanned arms but all at once she seemed much more likable than usual.

The girl cousins were competing at lugging the little ones here and there, staggering around with them as if Jin-Ho and Susan were giant dolls. Linwood was huddled in a corner glumly wolfing down his cake. The men were discussing baseball, and Pat and the two sisters-in-law were making more of the business of serving than seemed called for. Only Ziba and her parents, standing slightly to one side, appeared at loose ends. Bitsy went over to them. Did you get tea? she asked the Hakimis, although both were holding cups and saucers. Are you not having any cake?

Mrs. Hakimi smiled even more broadly, and Mr. Hakimi said, So kind of you, Mrs. Donaldson Please: it's Bitsy, she told him for the dozenth time. Also, she had kept her maiden name, but no sense getting into that now.

Mrs. Hakimi and I are watching our waistlines, he said. He patted his stomach, which certainly could have used watching, although his wife had one of those short, cozy figures that made calorie-counting seem beside the point.

Ziba said, It does look delicious, though. Did you bake it yourself, Bitsy?

Oh, my heavens, no! I've never been good at pastry.

Me neither, Ziba said. My mother's the pastry expert. She makes delicious baklava.

Is that right! Bitsy turned to Mrs. Hakimi. She knew it was laughable to think that a louder tone of voice would make her more easily understood, but somehow she couldn't stop herself. Isn't that wonderful! Baklava! she said, with more animation than she'd shown since high school.

Mrs. Hakimi said, I do not ever buy the… and then she gazed helplessly at Ziba and dissolved in a stream of Farsi.

She doesn't buy the filo dough. She makes her dough from scratch, Ziba said. She rolls it out herself, thin enough to see daylight through.

Isn't that… wonderful! Bitsy said again.

My wife is a very talented person, Mr. Hakimi announced. Mrs. Hakimi made a tsking sound and looked down into her teacup.

Well, next we're going to show a videotape, Bitsy said. She figured it would count for something if she faced the Hakimis as she spoke, even though her words were meant for Ziba. My brothers and one of Brad's uncles and, oh, just lots of people, some of our friends too, brought video cameras to the airport when we went to meet Jin-Ho. So we're going to show the tape, but I want to apologize right now for the fact that it's all Jin-Ho and no Susan. We didn't know back then that Susan would be there! Otherwise we'd have filmed her too.

Oh, that's okay, Ziba said. I have the memory in my head.

You do? Bitsy asked. Isn't it funny, the whole evening's such a blur to me. I remember when I first saw Jin-Ho's face; I remember reaching out for her. But then what? How did she react? It all seems like a dream now.

Mrs. Hakimi poked Ziba's arm. Tell about Susan, she ordered.

What about her, Mummy?

Tell about when we first met her.

Oh, Ziba said. She turned to Bitsy. My parents didn't come to the airport, remember. They had a prior engagement. She lowered her sweeping lashes a fraction of an inch. (Prior engagement. Right.) They visited later that week, and when they walked in, Susan was sitting in her high chair and she raised her eyebrows at them and said, 'Ho?' Only babbling, you understand. She didn't mean anything by it. But it sounded like a Farsi word, khob. The word for 'well.' 'Well?' she was saying. 'Do I pass inspection, or don't I?'

Mrs. Hakimi said, Khob? and doubled over with laughter, covering her mouth with one hand. Her husband said, Ha. Ha. He looked across the room toward Susan. A child of spirit, he said. We Hakimis are known for our spirit. We have, how do you say. We have backbone.

Bitsy smiled and followed his gaze. It was true that Susan generally showed a certain dauntlessness, puny though she was. At the moment she seemed to have decided that she had been toted around long enough, and she had planted herself in Jin-Ho's child-sized rocker and was gripping its arms so stubbornly that when one of the cousins tried to lift her, the rocker came along with her.

Mrs. Hakimi was still saying, Khob? and laughing behind her cupped palm, and Ziba was watching her fondly. Now they dote on her, she told Bitsy. She's their favorite grandchild.

Mr. Hakimi said, No, no, no, no, no. No favorites, and wagged a thick index finger at his daughter, but it didn't seem he really meant it.

Well, why don't we go watch the video, Bitsy told them. Everybody! she called, clapping her hands. Shall we move into the TV room for the video?

She threaded through the crowd, rounding up those who hung back to continue their conversations. Brad, are you coming? Laura? Jeannine? Somebody bring the girls in; they haven't seen this either.

She had straightened the TV room earlier that morning, but already the children had managed to wreck it. Various cushions were strewn on the rug, and a Teen People magazine lay in the seat of the armchair. (Stefanie's, no doubt the ten-year-old going on twenty.) Bitsy plucked it up between thumb and forefinger and dropped it on the windowsill. Sit here, she told her mother. Will this be comfortable? Somebody hand me a cushion for Mom.

Brad, meanwhile, was rummaging through the videotapes heaped on top of the TV. You kids took my tape out of the machine, he complained. I had it all ready to roll! Now, where…? Ah. Got it.

Some of the older people packed themselves in a row on the sofa the Hakimis and Brad's parents. Dave settled on one arm of Connie's chair and everyone else sat on the floor even Maryam, assuming almost a lotus position with her back very straight. Abe offered to bring her a chair from the dining room, but she said, I prefer this, thank you, and she drew Susan onto her lap and wrapped her arms around her.

A while ago, Sami and Ziba had gone away for the weekend and left Susan with Maryam. Bitsy was amazed when she heard about it. During her own brief absences never longer than a couple of hours, and only for unavoidable reasons such as doctor appointments she used a person from Sitters Central, a woman certified in infant CPR. Anyhow, her mother was too frail to babysit and her in-laws had made it plain that they had their own busy lives. But under no circumstances would she have considered leaving Jin-Ho overnight. She would have been frantic with worry! Children were so fragile. She realized that now. When you thought of all that could happen, the electrical sockets and the Venetian-blind cords and the salmonella chicken and the toxic furniture polish and the windpipe-sized morsels of food and the uncapped medicine bottles and the lethal two inches of bathtub water, it seemed miraculous that any child at all made it through to adulthood.

She reached for Jin-Ho and pulled her closer, even though it meant pulling her cousin Polly along with her.

Brad said, Here we go! and stepped back from the TV. On a dated-looking, pale blue watered-silk background, copperplate script spelled out The Arrival of Jin-Ho. Classy, someone murmured, and Mac called, This was a firm I found in the Yellow Pages. Very reasonably Ssh! everyone told him, because now a voice could be heard from the TV set Mac's own voice, but more public-sounding. Okay, folks, we're at the Baltimore/ Washington Airport. Friday evening, August fifteenth, nineteen ninety-seven. It is seven thirty-nine p. M. The weather is warm and humid. The plane is due to land in, let's see…

Brad closed the curtains, turning the watered silk a deeper blue, and then settled on the floor next to Bitsy. Watch, sweetheart, he told Jin-Ho. She was sucking her thumb and her eyes were at half-mast. (She hadn't slept during her nap today, perhaps sensing the excitement.)

A jumble of figures appeared: Dickinsons and Donaldsons, intermingled, wearing summer clothes. You could tell it must have been hot because people had a frazzled, sweaty look, even the most attractive of them not quite at their best. Well, except for Pat and Lou, as cool and chalky as two bisque figurines. (Although Pat was heard to say, from her place on the couch, Good heavens! I'm so old!) A girl cousin scampered across the screen, green plaid shirttails flying. That's me! That's my old shirt! little Deirdre shouted, and Jeannine said, Ssh.

I loved that shirt!

Straight ahead you see the proud parents, Mac's onscreen voice was announcing. Brad and Bitsy, both very happy. Bitsy got up at five this morning. This is an extremely important day in their lives.

Just hearing him say those words made Bitsy a little teary. To herself, though, she looked not so much happy as terrified. And so unformed! So tentative and shy, as if it would take motherhood to turn her into a grownup. She was clutching her tape recorder and speaking into it inaudibly, her chin tucked in an unbecoming way. Beside her, Brad held a car seat level in both arms as if he expected their daughter to drop into it from the heavens.

The scene broke off and then, confusingly, Mac himself appeared, filmed by someone else. He was squinting into his video camera, and just beyond him Uncle Oswald was squinting into his camera. Bitsy thought of the childhood Christmas when she and both of her brothers had been given Kodaks, and every photo from that day showed not faces but head-on cameras aimed glaringly at whoever happened to be taking the picture.

The onscreen voice Abe's voice, now said, I started counting up who was here and lost track at thirty-four. So Jin-Ho, honey, if you're watching this from some point in the future, you can see how eager your new family was to meet you.

Everybody glanced at Jin-Ho, but she was sound asleep.

Connie appeared, looking healthier than she had in months, and Dave beside her and then Linwood, propped against a wall intently punching a Game Boy. Abe was introducing people as he filmed them. Now, here is your Aunt Jeannine. Here's Bridget, your cousin, and here's your cousin Polly. The camera careened past two strangers, rested briefly on Laura, and swooped back to Linwood. You could get carsick watching this. Bitsy closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them she found that whoever had spliced the tapes must have felt the same way, because now it was no longer Abe speaking but Mac again. All right, folks, it's quite a while later. Been a bit of a delay. But the plane has landed, finally, and we're watching the first passengers come in off the jetway. Big moment! Big, big moment.

Bitsy saw a very tall young man and realized that she'd seen him before. She saw two businessmen, a boy with a backpack, a woman dropping her briefcase to hug two children in pajamas. How odd: these people were so familiar, and yet she hadn't given them a thought since that night and had certainly not been aware that they were stored in her brain. It was something like rereading a book and coming across a passage where you can recall every word a split second before you see it, even though you could never have summoned it up on your own.

The woman from the agency, for instance. The Korean woman in the navy suit that resembled an airline uniform, with her broad cheekbones and her stern, official manner. Bitsy had mentally dismissed her the instant she and Brad took possession of their daughter she'd exorcized her, you could almost say and yet now the two fine creases below the woman's eyes were so well known to her that she wondered if she had dreamed about her every single night of this past year. And the diaper bag! Oh, look. Pink vinyl, cheap and poorly made, already beginning to peel along the edges of the strap. They had discarded it immediately in favor of the one that Bitsy had sewn from her own handwoven fabric, but here it was, back again, like a statesman's casket reappearing on the evening news after you have spent the day watching it being buried.

And Jin-Ho. Ah, there: the camera zoomed in on her face and held steady. She was so much smaller! Her features were so much closer together! Look at you, Jin-Ho, Brad murmured, but to Bitsy, the child asleep in Polly's lap bore almost no connection to the baby on the screen. The sudden ache she felt was very like grief, as if that first Jin-Ho had somehow passed out of existence.

The woman from the agency was handing the baby to Bitsy. Bitsy was hugging the baby close and her relatives were smiling and dabbing their eyes with tissues. Everybody, both onscreen and off, was making soft cooing sounds like a barnful of mourning doves.

Oh, wasn't adoption better than childbirth? More dramatic, more meaningful. Bitsy felt sorry for those poor women who had merely delivered.

Evidently someone else was filming now, because Mac could be seen making googly eyes at the infant Jin-Ho. Maybe it was Uncle Oswald who was sweeping his camera across the assemblage one last time and then drawing back, back to take in the jetway door and the final trickle of passengers, the man with the cane and the gray-haired couple and oh!

There was Susan.

We did get her in! We did! Bitsy cried. There she is in her carrier!

And there were Sami and Ziba, too. There was Maryam following behind with her faultless posture and her imperious, bugle-clear Here we are. Yazdan. All three were remarkably free of appurtenances. No cameras, video cameras, or tape recorders. They traveled light, these people. (I have the memory in my head wasn't that how Ziba had put it? All at once Bitsy felt envious.) The photographer tracked their progress toward the jetway and then focused again on Susan, or on what little could be seen of her, which was mostly a pink T-shirt and a tuft of scanty black hair. Bitsy leaned past Brad to search out Ziba in the audience. She found her sitting next to Sami on the floor near the bookcase. Doesn't this bring it all back? she called, and Ziba said, But she's tiny! without taking her eyes from the screen. She's like a whole other person! she said.

I know.

It makes me sad.

Oh, I know! Bitsy cried, and if she'd been nearer to Ziba she would have hugged her, and hugged Sami too with his sweet little glasses glittering like tears in the light from the TV.

Then she turned back to the movie and found it had ended without her. Credits were gliding across the watered silk. Special thanks to the Loving Hearts Korean-American Adoption Center. Brad clicked the remote control and rose to open the curtains, and light flooded the room. People blinked and stretched. Jin-Ho was still asleep, her head lolling against Polly's chest, but that was all right; she would have many more chances to watch this movie in years to come. Bitsy patted Jin-Ho's satin-draped leg and then struggled to her feet and made her way toward Sami and Ziba. Sami was holding a wide-awake, squirmy Susan and listening to Mac's advice on the best brand of video camera, but Ziba turned to Bitsy and threw her arms around her. Why do I feel so sad? she asked Bitsy. Isn't it silly? She collected herself and wiped her eyes. She'd left a damp spot on Bitsy's shoulder. It was the happiest day of my life! It's a day I'll never forget.

Me either, but would you want to go back to it? Bitsy asked her. Never!

They both laughed.

Come help me brew another pot of tea, Bitsy told her.

They made their way through the crowd, which wasn't easy. Other people were damp-eyed too; other people wanted to hug them. Bitsy's mother said, It broke my heart to see our Jin-Ho arriving all alone like that, and Bitsy's father said, Alone? She had that nice Korean woman.

Yes, but you know what I mean.

Maybe that's why we're sad, Bitsy told Ziba as they entered the kitchen. We're so used to having the girls by now; we forget they haven't always been with us. We see them coming off the plane and we say, 'Oh, no, they made that long trip without us! Where were we?'

And they lived those first months of their lives without us, Ziba said. All alone! Coping for themselves!

They fell into each other's arms again, crying and laughing both.

Oh, Ziba, who else understands how it feels? Bitsy asked as she leaned back against the sink and fished in her pocket for a tissue. I wish you lived closer. I hate that I have to get in my car to go see you. I'd like to have you next door. We could call to each other over the fence, and the girls could play together whenever they wanted without all these formal arrangements.

She could see it in her mind: the casual comings and goings, the screen doors slamming as the girls raced out to meet the first thing after breakfast. Maybe the Sansoms at 2410 could sell to the Yazdans. They were getting on in years, after all, and their Cape Cod was much, much nicer than any McMansion out in Hunt Valley. She blew her nose and said, We could babysit for each other. Soon the girls would hardly notice if one of us was gone.

When they got a little older they could have sleepovers, Ziba said.

Maryam had joined them by now. She was gently setting Bitsy to one side so she could fill the kettle. Being together so much, Bitsy said, they would think adoption was natural. I mean, they would know it was. They wouldn't have any self-doubts or sense of inferiority.

Does this stove need a match to light it? Maryam asked.

Oh, I'm sorry! No, just that one burner; the others are fine, Bitsy told her. You know, she said, turning back to Ziba, when I was in that poetry group, I read about these two women poets who had so much they wanted to share with each other, they installed a separate telephone line and left their receivers off the hook at all times so as to keep in constant contact. Not that I'd want to do that myself, but don't you sympathize with the urge?

They left them off night and day? Ziba asked. Wouldn't the telephone company send one of those beeping signals?

Well, I don't… I may have some of the details a little wrong, Bitsy said. I'm just talking theoretically here. I did wonder how they could hope to catch every last word. What if one of them happened to speak while the other was in a different room? They surely couldn't have heard from everywhere in the house.

From her place at the stove, Maryam said, How interesting that that's what you would worry about.

Pardon? Bitsy said.

Why wouldn't you worry too much would be heard, rather than too little? Private things, that families should keep separate.

Oh, Bitsy said. Well, of course. She glanced toward Ziba. Of course, that would be… Well, maybe they didn't have the phones off the hook every single instant.

Ah, Maryam said. In that case, then.

I mean, it isn't something I would want to do myself. I said that. I said it was just the general urge that I understood.

Maryam didn't comment. She had a disconcerting way of letting a conversation drop, Bitsy had noticed. All she did was spoon tea leaves into the teapot. It was Ziba who spoke up next. Another thing about the video, she said. I kept thinking I could smell the smells. I remembered how Susan smelled when I first held her, like a spicier kind of vanilla, and now she doesn't smell that way at all. She's more like regular vanilla. Did you think of the smells, too?

Well, no… I know what you mean, though, Bitsy said. But her heart was not in it. A sort of dullness fell over her, and all at once she felt out of place in her own kitchen. She was underfoot here. She had nothing to do. In a sense she had nothing to do with her life, if you didn't count Jin-Ho. She had never completed her education courses, never held a full-time job. She had busied herself with dribs and drabs like teaching yoga and attending poetry seminars and throwing pottery and weaving little made-up activities without steady pay or health-care benefits. Brad said her weaving was beautiful, but he would, of course. In fact she hadn't sat at her loom in months, and last week when she was wearing one of her old creations she had happened to notice herself in the full-length mirror upstairs and all at once she saw that she might as well be wearing a rug. The fabric was so coarse and so boldly striped, a board-stiff rectangle from which her bare arms and legs emerged all scraggy and ropy.

Oh, she said, I should see to…, and she turned and left the kitchen. She drifted through the dining room, where Laura and her sexy daughter were hissing at each other over the coffee urn. She passed Linwood, slouched in the doorway chewing a thumbnail, and Bridget hauling Susan toward the miniature rocker. In the corner chair in the living room she saw her mother the person she'd been looking for, she realized. She sidled past Mr. and Mrs. Hakimi, who apparently had no one to talk to just now but what concern was that to her? She settled on the arm of her mother's chair. Oh, good, her mother said instantly, and Bitsy took comfort from the thought that one person in this room, at least, was pleased to see her. But next her mother said, Here, and handed her a slip of paper.

What's this? Bitsy asked.

It's the name of a woman.

Bertha MacRae, Bitsy read, and a telephone number, in a careful, rounded hand.

A woman who comes to the house, her mother said.

Comes to the house?

Her mother gazed up at her, unblinking. Lately her eyes had changed shape. The lower lids had dropped and pouched, which somehow gave her an expression of reproach although she was not the kind of woman who had ever reproached anyone. She said, I don't believe she's a nurse, exactly. She must be some sort of aide, but she's licensed. She's been trained. And she has a couple of sisters who might take the other shifts. Evidently the twenty-four hours are divided into three shifts.

Where did you get this? Bitsy asked.

Maryam gave it to me. This woman nursed Maryam's husband when he was dying.

The word dying had a sharp, shocking sound, but Connie seemed not to notice. She passed smoothly on. Maryam says the woman's still working. They still keep in touch. She's not sure about the sisters, but if they aren't available, Maryam thinks the woman would know other people who are.

She took Bitsy's hand. Connie's skin was so dry these days that her fingertips had a puckered feel, as if she'd just stepped out of a bath. Will you help me with your father? she asked.

Help you how, Mom?

You know he's going to object. He's going to tell me he can take care of me himself. But he can't do it all, Bitsy. Not morning, noon, and night. And I want to be able to ask for things. I want to ask and not have to worry that I'm asking for too much.

Bitsy said, Oh, Mom, and bent to lay her cheek on top of her mother's head. Connie's poor hair was so thin that it felt warm. Of course I'll help, she said.

Thank you, dear.

Bitsy knew she should feel grateful to Maryam, but instead a wall of resentment rose up within her. It seemed that some belonging of hers had been taken away from her. Or some plan of hers had been foiled; that would be more accurate. Although in fact she had not had any plan, and it should have been a huge relief that someone else had come forward with one.

The children were laughing and tumbling, and the men were trading technical specifications, and Mr. Hakimi was apparently telling Mrs. Hakimi something instructive, although he was speaking in Farsi and Bitsy couldn't understand his words. She had to guess at his meaning just from his tone, as if she were a foreigner in an unfamiliar country.

Sami had a sort of performance piece that he liked to put on for the relatives. He was known for it. They would be sitting around the living room with their afternoon tea a few of Ziba's brothers and sisters-in-law visiting from L. A., or maybe a couple of aunts or the cousins who'd settled in Texas and one of them would say, almost slyly, These Americans: can you figure them out? Then this person would offer some anecdote to start things rolling. For instance: Our hostess asked where we were from and I told her Iran. 'Oh!' she said. 'Persia!' 'No,' I said, 'Iran. Persia is only a British invention. From the start, it was always Iran.' 'Well, I prefer Persia,' she told me. 'Persia sounds much more beautiful.'

People would cluck and nod, having been through such exchanges many times themselves, and then they would gaze expectantly at Sami. Sami would roll his eyes. Ah, yes, he would say, the Persia Passion. I know it well. Sometimes that alone was enough to start them grinning; they were so ready for what came next.

What you should have told her is, 'Oh, then! In that case! Please don't let a mere twenty-five hundred years of history stand in your way, madam.' (The madam came out of nowhere. He tended to slip into a fusty, overstarched style of speech on these occasions.) You can be certain she'll argue. 'No, no,' she'll insist, 'Iran is a newfangled name. They announced the change in the thirties.' 'They announced what their real name was in the thirties,' you tell her, and she'll say, ' Well, anyhow. I myself plan to keep calling it Persia.'

Or he would get going on the American craze for logic. Logic's why they're always suing each other. They believe that for every event there has to be a cause. Surely somebody is to blame! they say. Stumble in the street when you're not looking and break your leg? Sue the city! Sue the store where you bought your glasses and the doctor who prescribed them! Fall down the stairs, bang your head on a cabinet, slip on the bathroom tiles? Sue your landlord! And don't just sue for medical bills; sue for pain, emotional trauma, public humiliation, lowered self-esteem!

Ooh, low self-esteem, a relative might murmur, and everyone would laugh.

They feel personally outraged by bad luck, Sami would go on. They have been lucky all their lives and they can't imagine that any misfortune should have the right to befall them. There must be some mistake! they say. They've always been so careful! They've paid the closest attention to every safety instruction the DANGER tag on the hair dryer saying Unplug after every use, and the print on the plastic bag saying This is not a toy, and the recycling pamphlet saying Warning: Before stepping on milk jugs to flatten them, please take firm hold of a reliable source of support.

Or he would embark upon a little riff about the Americans' fond belief that they were of breathtaking interest to everyone else in the world. Imagine this: A friend of my father's, a famous poet, was invited here on some sort of grant. They escorted him to every state in the Union and demonstrated how they fed their livestock. 'Now, here, sir, we use the most modern methods of crop rotation to ensure an adequate supply of. .' A lyric poet! A city man, born and raised in Tehran!

Or he would examine their so-called openness. So instantaneously chummy they are, so 'Hello, I love you,' so 'How do you do, let me tell you my marital problems,' and yet, have any of them ever really, truly let you into their lives? Think about it! Think!

Or their claim to be so tolerant. They say they're a culture without restrictions. An unconfined culture, a laissez-faire culture, a doyour-own-thing kind of culture. But all that means is, they keep their restrictions a secret. They wait until you violate one and then they get all faraway and chilly and unreadable, and you have no idea why. My cousin Davood? My mother's nephew? He lived here for six months and then he moved to Japan. He said that in Japan, at least they tell you the rules. At least they admit they have rules. He feels much more comfortable there, he said.

Then others would chime in with stories of their own the friendships unaccountably ended, the stunned silence after innocent questions. You can't ask how much someone's dress cost. You can't ask the price of their houses. You don't know what to ask!

These conversations were conducted in English, because Sami would not speak Farsi. He had flat-out refused to ever since the day back in preschool when he had discovered that none of his classmates spoke it. And there lay the irony, according to his mother. You with your Baltimore accent, she said, American born, American raised, never been anywhere else: how can you say these things? You're American yourself! You're poking fun at your own people!

Aw, Mom, it's all in good humor, he said.

It doesn't sound so good-humored to me. And where would you be without this country? I ask you! You take it for granted, is the problem. You have no idea what it feels like to have to watch every word, and keep every opinion to yourself, and look over your shoulder all the time wondering who might be listening. Oh, I never thought you would talk this way! When you were growing up, you were more American than the Americans.

Well, there you have it, he told her. Hear what you just said? 'More American than the Americans.' Didn't you think to wonder why?

In high school you never dated anyone but blondes. I'd resigned myself to being Sissy Parker's mother-in-law.

I didn't even come close to marrying Sissy!

Well, I certainly never expected that you would pick an Iranian girl.

I don't know why not, he said.

This wasn't entirely truthful, because in his heart he too had always thought his wife would be American. As a child he had longed for a Brady Bunch family a father who was relaxed and plaid-shirted and buddy-buddy, a mother who was sporty rather than exotic. He had assumed that his schoolmates enjoyed an endless round of weenie roasts and backyard football games and apple-bobbing parties, and his fantasy was that his wife would draw him into the same kind of life. But then his senior year in college, he met Ziba.

Unlike the daughters of his parents' old friends, Ziba had a nonchalant, sauntering style about her. She was confident and plainspoken. She came right up to him after their first class together (The Industrial Revolution, spring semester) and said, Iranian, right? Right, he said. He braced himself for the usual chitchat about what-part, what-year, whom-do-you-know, all voiced in that combination of flirtatiousness and cloying deference that Iranian women put on with the opposite sex. Instead, she said, Me too.

Ziba Hakimi, and she breezily trilled her fingers at him and moved off to join her friends American friends, male and female mixed. She wore jeans and a Tears for Fears T-shirt, and her hair in those days was short enough so that she could gel and spike it into something resembling punk.

As he came to know her, though (as their exchanges grew slightly longer each day, and they fell into the habit of walking out of the classroom together), he noticed how much they understood about each other without discussion. A cloak of shared background surrounded them invisibly. She asked him in mid-March if he planned to go home the next weekend, and she didn't need to explain that she meant for New Year's. He passed her on the library steps where she was eating a snack with a friend, and her snack was not chips or cookies or Ring Dings but a pear, which she was slicing into wedges with a tiny silver knife like the ones his mother set out with the fruit tray after every meal.

That summer after graduation he drove over to Washington often to take her to dinner or a movie, and he met a whole string of her relatives. To him the Hakimis seemed both familiar and alien. He recognized the language they spoke, the foods they served, the music they were listening to, but he was uncomfortable with their lavish parties and their collector's zeal for the most expensive, most ostentatious brand names Rolex and Prada and Farragamo. He would have been even more uncomfortable with their politics, no doubt, if he had not had the good sense to avoid discussing the subject. (Ziba's parents all but genuflected whenever the Shah was mentioned.)

What would his mother think of these people? He knew what she would think. He brought Ziba home to meet her but he left Ziba's relatives out of it. And his mother, although she welcomed Ziba graciously, never proposed that the two families get together.

But she might not have in any case. She could be very unforthcoming.

In the fall Sami and Ziba went back to the university Sami to work on his graduate degree in European history and Ziba to start her senior year. They were deeply in love by then. Sami had a shabby apartment off campus and Ziba spent every night with him, although she continued to keep all her clothes in her dorm room so that her family wouldn't suspect. Her family visited constantly. They showed up every weekend with foil-wrapped platters of eggplant and jars of homemade yogurt. They hugged Sami to their chests and kissed him on both cheeks and inquired after his studies. In Mr. Hakimi's opinion, European history was not the best choice of fields. You propose to do what with this? To teach, he said. You will become a professor, teaching students who'll become professors in turn and teach other students who will become professors also. It reminds me of those insects who live only a few days, only for the purpose of reproducing their species. Is this a practical plan? I don't think so!

Sami didn't bother arguing. He would chuckle and say, Oh, well, to each his own. Somehow, though how did this happen? by the time he and Ziba were married, late the following June, he had agreed to work in her uncle's development company. Peacock Homes built and sold houses in the more upscale areas northern Virginia and Montgomery County and they were expanding to Baltimore County. At first Sami's job was temporary. Just try it, everyone said, and go back to school in the fall if he didn't like it. He did like it, though. He grew to enjoy the wish-fulfilling aspects of it the couples confiding their cherished, touchingly specific dreams. (Got to have an eye-level oven. Got to have a desk nook next to the fridge where the wife can make out the week's menus.) He studied for his real-estate exam and passed it. He and Ziba moved into the company's newest project, and Ziba found work with her cousin Siroos at Siroos Design (Serious Design, customers tended to call it), decorating the houses that Peacock Homes sold.

If Maryam was disappointed that Sami had given up his studies, she never said so. Well, of course she was disappointed. But she told him it was his decision. She was cordial to the Hakimis and affectionate with Ziba; he knew she liked Ziba, and he didn't think that was only because Ziba was Iranian. For their engagement she had offered them a ring he'd never seen before, an antique ring with a diamond that satisfied even the Hakimis. Or maybe it didn't. It wasn't huge. But at least they had professed to be satisfied. Oh, everybody on both sides had been exceedingly well behaved.

Sami didn't exempt the Donaldsons from his tirades about Americans. If anything, he was harder on them. They were such easy targets, after all especially Bitsy, with her burlap dresses and her more-organic-than-thou airs and her with-it way of phrasing things. She called her mother's funeral a 'celebration,' he told the relatives. She said, 'I hope you two will come to the celebration for my mother.'

Did she misspeak, perhaps, out of grief? Ziba's father asked. No, because she repeated it. She said, 'And please will you tell Maryam about the celebration, too.'

In this case it was Ziba who objected. What's the matter with that? she asked Sami. People say all the time they're gathering to 'celebrate a life.' It's a very common expression.

My point exactly, he told her. It's a knee jerk, trendy, chic expression.

Well, for shame, Sami. The Donaldsons are our best friends! They've been wonderful to us!

It was true that they had been wonderful. They were so good-natured, so warm, so hospitable. Best friends, though? There Sami had his reservations. It wasn't that he could come up with any better friends, but Bitsy really got on his nerves sometimes. And he couldn't resist poking fun at her. She just invited it! Listen to this, he told Ziba's sisters-in-law. A few weeks back, Bitsy decides it's time to toilet-train her daughter. She's going to bring it about by 'positive reinforcement.' Bitsy's very big on positive reinforcement. So what does she do? She throws a Potty Party. She puts Jin-Ho in Wonder Woman underpants and sends off invitations to four other kids the same age, including Susan. I believe the suggested dress code was underpants for the guests as well, but she didn't insist, which was lucky for us since Susan hasn't a clue yet. We brought Susan in her diaper. But Jin-Ho was wearing underpants she kept lifting her dress to show us and so were two of the other kids. And someone I'm not naming names, here must have had a little misadventure, because gradually all the parents started getting funny looks on their faces and sniffing at the air and sliding their eyes toward each other, and finally one of them said, 'Um, does it seem to you…?' By then it was too late, though. Way too late, because evidently this misadventure had happened in the backyard where all the kids were playing, and they must have run through it a dozen times before they came inside for refreshments and tramped across the rugs, climbed up on the dining-room chairs. . He was laughing so hard that he had to pause for breath, and the relatives were shaking their heads and trying not to laugh too. I mean! he said. Talk about your theme party!

Ziba said, Oh, Sami, show a little mercy.

And while we're on the subject of parties, he said, doesn't it strike you all as quintessentially American that the Donaldsons think the day their daughter came to this country was more important than the day she was born? For her birthday they give her a couple of presents, but for the day she came to America it's a full-fledged Arrival Party, a major extravaganza with both extended families and a ceremony of song and a video presentation. Behold! You've reached the Promised Land! The pinnacle of all glories!

Ignore him, Ziba told her relatives.

Her relatives, after all, were thrilled to have arrived in America themselves; but even so they couldn't help smiling. Sami told them, You understand. And guess what: this second time around, we're the ones who have to throw the party.

We don't have to throw it; I offered, Ziba said. It's our turn, she told the relatives. They threw the party last year. Only they served just cake and beverages, and I always think it's nicer to give people a whole meal.

Yes! An Iranian meal, one of her sisters-in-law said.

With kebabs, another said, and morgh polo and sabzi polo and perhaps a nice shirin polo Sami said, Whoa, but he was drowned out by Ziba's Aunt Azra. I've just been given a secret recipe for making real rosewater ice cream, she said, and then she leaned forward and cupped her mouth with one hand, as if she worried about spies, and whispered, You take a quart of Cool Whip You've missed my whole point! Sami told them.

But he could see he had lost his audience.

There happened to be seven relatives visiting at the time of the Arrival Party: two of Ziba's brothers and their wives, two young nieces, and Aunt Azra. And naturally Ziba's parents had to drive over from Washington to share in the excitement; so this meant nine extra people milling around the house preparing for the party. It took them a week. Or it took the women a week. The men steered clear of it all. They sat in the family room attached to the kitchen, out from underfoot but separated only by a counter and close enough, therefore, to eavesdrop on the women's conversation; and they drank their tiny glasses of tea and thumbed their ropes of fat amber prayer beads and gave little grunts of amusement when they overheard something choice.

Aunt Azra, for instance, was leaving her husband. She had traveled alone from Tehran to visit their children in Texas, and now she had made up her mind to stay for good. She had decided she didn't like sex. (The men raised their eyebrows at each other.) It was a lot of mess and effort, she said, and she clapped a lid on a rice pot. The women wanted to know how her husband had reacted when she told him. Well, she said, I telephoned on a Friday morning, early. Friday morning was best because at home it would be afternoon, and I knew he'd be going to his brother's house later on for poker. He would have people there to console him. His brother's wife, especially Ashraf. Do you remember Ashraf? An unfortunate greenish complexion but very kind, very comforting. That time I had that miscarriage she came to my house and she said, 'I'm going to make you a little halvah to build up your strength, Azi — june.' I said, 'Oh, I don't have the appetite,' but she said, 'Trust me.' And then she went into the kitchen, sent Akbar away this was in the days when people still had servants; remember Akbar? He and his twin brother came to us from some village, hardly old enough to talk and dressed in rags, both of them. The brother walked with a limp but he was very strong, and he took over our garden and he grew the most beautiful roses. Never before or since have our roses bloomed so well. In fact my neighbor, Mrs. Massoud, once said this is the Mrs. Massoud whose son fell in love with a Baha'i girl But your husband? Ziba's father bellowed across the counter. What about your husband?

The women exchanged glances, and Azra stepped closer to them and lowered her voice.

It would make her look very bad if after she bores us with all this trivia, we learn that her husband shot himself, Mr. Hakimi told the other men.

He was speaking in Farsi. All of them spoke in Farsi, unless they were addressing Sami or Susan. Each time Sami walked in upon these gatherings (he, at least, had to go out to work every day), everyone greeted him in English, and his father-in-law would ask him in English, How many houses you have sold today? Eh? But before Sami could answer, Mr. Hakimi would revert to Farsi to tell his sons, Mamal says the real-estate market has been excellent these past months. Just like that, the English was abandoned. Which was fine with Sami. It let him off the hook. It relieved him of the burden of keeping up his end of things. He would lift Susan into his lap and settle down comfortably to listen.

Like these men following the women's gossip depending on their gossip, relying on it for connection Sami floated on the gentle current of the relatives' Farsi, comprehending some ninety percent and letting the other ten percent wash past him. The men discussed a cousin's investment proposal; the women debated adding an extra pinch of saffron; the nieces quarreled over a Walkman. If Sami stayed silent long enough, people might forget him so completely that they said things he shouldn't hear mentioned Uncle Ahmad's new tax-evasion scheme, or let slip some sharp-tongued reference to Maryam. (Well, Khanom would claim it was cheating to put potatoes in the bottom of the rice pan the Khanom emphasized in an acid and satirical tone.) Their attitude toward his mother didn't offend him as much as it might have, because he figured she deserved it. After all this time, for instance, she still called Ziba's mother Mrs. Hakimi and not Gita — june. He knew that was no mere oversight.

Where is the cinnamon? Who's taken it? Ziba asked. Her Farsi was twangier than his mother's, just unfamiliar enough to give her a sheen of added appeal. I asked him when he was leaving, one sister-in-law told the other, and he said he wasn't sure; either before the wedding or after. 'Well, what date is the wedding?' I asked, and he said he didn't know because he hadn't found someone to marry yet. Ziba's mother, swathed in a traffic-sign-yellow apron reading CAUTION! GUY AT THE GRILL, hoisted a casserole onto the counter with a little puff of a breath. Iranian women were very hardworking, Sami always noticed. They produced such labor-intensive dishes hundreds of hand-rolled stuffed grape leaves, dozens of butter-brushed filo sheets and so many of them for each meal. Aunt Azra was shaping several pounds of ground lamb into a single enormous ball, patting it all over with efficient little slaps. The men were heaving themselves from their chairs and moving out to the backyard for a smoke. Mr. Hakimi favored thick black cigars that smelled like burning tires, and both of Ziba's brothers (middle-aged, and as bald as their father) had nicotine-stained fingers from their two-pack-a-day cigarette habit. They felt it was unreasonable that they couldn't smoke indoors. Secondhand smoke! one of them scoffed, spitting the phrase out in English before slipping back into Farsi. I have smoked around my daughters all their lives, and look at them! They're much healthier than Susan.

They all thought Susan was too small for her age, and too pale. They also thought she looked too Chinese, but a few confrontations with Ziba had taught them not to mention that.

How would your family feel about a child who was Asian? Sami had asked Ziba when she first brought up adopting. Ziba's instant answer had been I don't care what my family feels; I care about having a baby. And because it was Sami's fault that she couldn't have one of her own, he had felt compelled to go along with her plan. He had hidden his doubts from everyone but his mother; to her he had poured them out, stopping by her house several times a week as furtively as if she were the Other Woman and sitting in her kitchen, letting his cup of tea grow cold, clamping his hands between his knees and talking on and on while Maryam listened noncommittally. I know Ziba believes that we'll be rescuing someone, he said. Some child who never had a chance, some disadvantaged orphan. But it's not as simple as she thinks, changing a life for the better! It's so easy to do harm in this world but so hard to do good, it seems to me. Easy to bomb a building to smithereens but hard to build one; easy to damage a child but hard to fix one who has problems. I don't think Ziba knows this. I think she just imagines we'll swoop up some lucky baby and give it a perfect life.

He waited for his mother to contradict him (he wanted her to contradict him), but she didn't. She took a sip of her tea and set down her cup. He said, And it's not as if children come with return guarantees. You can't simply hand them back if they don't work out.

You can't hand a birth child back either, his mother said.

But it's less likely you would want to. A birth child is blood-related; you recognize certain traits and so you tolerate them better.

Or worse, his mother said. Traits in yourself that you've always disliked. That happens too, on occasion.

It did? He decided not to pursue this. He stood up and circled the kitchen, fists thrust deep in his pockets, and when his back was toward her he said, Also, um, I worry that this child will feel out of place. He or she will always look so unmistakably foreign to other people, so Korean or Chinese. You know?

He turned back to find his mother regarding him with what seemed to be amusement, but she said nothing.

I realize that sounds very superficial, he told her.

She waved a hand dismissively and took another sip of tea.

And then, he said. Speaking of which. It would be so obvious that we were not the true parents. There wouldn't be even a possibility of any physical resemblance.

His mother said, Ah, well. When your children resemble you, you tend to forget they're not you. Much better to be reminded they're not, every time you set eyes on them.

I don't think I'd need reminding, he said.

I remember once when you were in high school, I heard you phoning a girl and you said, 'This is Sami Yaz-dun.' It came as such a shock: my oh-so-American son. Partly I felt pleased and partly I felt sad.

Well, I wanted to fit in! he said. I wasn't so American! Not to them, at least. Not to the kids in my school.

She waved a hand again. She said, At any rate. You're thinking you might not love this child. You will, though. I promise.

He wasn't sure which claim was more presumptuous: that she knew what he was thinking or that she could predict how he would feel.

But she was right, of course, on both counts. In the last few weeks before Susan arrived he dreamed almost nightly that their baby was some sort of monster, once a lizardy creature and once a normal human but with evil vertical pupils like a goat's; and that Ziba was unsuspecting and angrily turned away when he tried to warn her. Then as soon as he saw Susan's fragile hair and pinched, anxious face, not beautiful at all despite what Ziba believed, he had felt a kind of caving-in sensation and a wave of fierce protectiveness, and if that wasn't love it soon became love. Susan was the greatest joy of his life. She was endlessly charming and funny and fascinating and, yes, eventually beautiful, which in some ways he regretted because her plainness had tugged at his heart so. Her cheeks rounded out but her mouth kept its pursed shape, as if she were forever carrying on some interior deliberation, and her hair grew long enough to be caught up in two paintbrush ponytails, one above each ear. When he sat among the relatives with her, she nestled against him trustfully and from time to time patted his wrist or twisted around to look up at him, her breath smelling sweetly of the trashy grape soft drink she liked.

The women had started discussing Aunt Azra's immigration prospects had she any hope of a green card? and Sami had to guess at some of the officialese. Ali told me I would need a… something, something, something. Then the men returned from the yard, wrapped in an almost visible veil of tobacco and ash, and the women interrupted themselves to announce a shortage of tomato paste. This made the men very happy. I'll go! I'll go! the three of them said. They loved American supermarkets. Sami, are you coming? this last in English. He felt that he ought to say yes, although he was sorry to leave the women's talk, which was turning, by the time the car keys had been found, to Ziba's conviction that Bitsy preferred Maryam's house to this one. Atusa, her oldest sister-in-law, told her she must be imagining things. Prefer Khanom's little unstylish house to this big, fancy, nice, modern one? You're just nervous, Ziba — june. You're just nervous about your party.

Reluctantly, Sami set Susan down next to her cousins and went off to join the men.

Happy Arrival Day, all! Bitsy caroled. Don't we have the perfect weather for it? We've brought the videotape. We've brought a propane lighter for the candles; much safer for the girls than matches. We've brought photographs from last year, so we can set up an exhibit.

She pecked Sami on the cheek and moved forward to hug Ziba, followed at some distance by Brad with an overstuffed shopping bag. Last of all came Jin-Ho, strolling slowly up the front walk and admiring her own sandals, which had the too-big, too-stiff look of shoes very recently purchased. (So: no Korean costume this year.) It always worried Sami a little that Jin-Ho was taller than Susan, and heavier. He felt a competitive uneasiness every time he saw her.

Now, I've been thinking some more about the song, Bitsy was telling Ziba. I've never been really happy with 'She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain.'

Meanwhile, the curbside rear door of the Donaldsons' car swung open and Bitsy's father inched out, hauling himself forth like a man weary to the bone. He must have had to be coaxed into coming. Since Connie's death Bitsy had dragged him along to every possible social event, but he didn't have much to say anymore and his large gray head had developed a droop.

Hello there, Dave! Sami called. Dave lifted an arm and let it flop and proceeded doggedly up the walk.

Do you know 'Waiting for a Girl Like You'? Bitsy was asking. That's one possibility. Unless it's too hard to sing; what do you think? Or then there's the Beatles. 'I Saw Her Standing There'; do you remember that? It occurs to me that if we rehearsed the children ahead of time oh, hello, Mrs. Hakimi! Happy Arrival Day!

Mrs. Hakimi wore flowered black silk and her husband was in a suit, but the relatives following them out of the house were dressed more informally especially Aunt Azra, who could have been heading for aerobics class, in her tank top and tight, knitted capri pants that revealed every bulge and ripple. How do you do? How do you do? they all murmured, except it sounded more like Do… do… They arranged themselves two and three deep across the front steps, so that when it came time to go inside there was some difficulty negotiating the doors. While everyone was still trying, another car pulled up Abe and Jeannine with their three girls. Right behind came Maryam, and as she was unloading a giant cake box from her back seat another car slid in behind hers with a disturbing rasp of sidewall against curb. Jesus Christ! they all heard Mac say. He was in the front passenger seat and Linwood was at the wheel. Apparently Linwood had earned his learner's permit since Sami had last seen him. Laura was sitting in the rear, and she climbed out and started up the walk without a backward glance as Mac went into a long harangue about the cost of new tires these days.

Where's Stefanie? Bitsy called.

Laura grimaced and said, Majorette camp.

Sami waited for Bitsy's reaction. The week before, she'd thrown a fit on the phone because Brad's parents were off on a cruise even though they knew full well they'd be missing Arrival Day. I mean! A cruise! she'd told Ziba. When their only grandchild is celebrating her second year in this country! But all she said now was, Oh, what a shame, in an offhand, trailing-away voice. Maybe she was relieved. The last time they'd all been together, Stefanie had painted the little ones' toenails a ghoulish electric blue.

Abe's three girls made a beeline for Jin-Ho and Susan, and this freed Ziba's nieces to peel off from the grownups and join them. They headed toward the backyard, where Sami had set up a gym set. By then Bitsy's brothers had spotted Sami's new car in the driveway. Say! Abe said. A Honda Civic! All the men trooped over to inspect it, including the Hakimi men although of course they had seen it before. Even Dave showed some interest. Before long he was arguing with Linwood's announcement that air bags did more harm than good. Meanwhile the women went into the house, and by the time the men had rejoined them Maryam was offering pistachios to Bitsy and her two sisters-in-law. They were the only ones in the living room. All the Hakimi women were crowded into the kitchen, where they remained, clanking pot lids and clattering dishes, until it was time to call people to the table.

An exhausting amount of discussion had gone into the serving arrangements. Sami had argued for a buffet. I don't see how there's any choice, he'd told Ziba. There'll be twenty-some people! Our table doesn't seat that many.

A buffet's not as intimate, though, Ziba said. I want this to feel intimate.

Well, how are you going to manage that with twenty-some people, Zee?

I'll seat the children separately, with the older ones in charge of the younger. That's, let's see… two, four, seven… And then if I put a couple of card tables at one end of the grownups' table. .

She prevailed, finally. The children settled themselves at the breakfast nook in the kitchen, while in the dining room the grownups crowded around the single immense, paisley-draped expanse that stretched almost from one wall to the other. You'd have to look closely to see the break where the card tables started. The main dishes were lined up on the sideboard huge crocks and platters and bowls and lesser dishes filled a quartet of TV trays in one corner. Bitsy's relatives couldn't get over it. I've never seen so much food in all my life! Jeannine said. This is a banquet! But Ziba said, Oh, it's nothing.

More kebabs are coming, Sami announced. Finish up what's here, everybody. He headed for the kitchen, edging around Bitsy, who was trying to lead a song rehearsal. He couldn't tell which song, though, because a mutiny seemed to be under way. Several of the children were drowning her out with She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain. They'll be wearing red pajamas when they come, Bridget sang, and the others, even Ziba's two nieces, shouted, Scratch! Scratch! and pounded their silverware on the table. Bitsy said, Children! Please! Sami grinned and lifted a platter of skewered meats from the counter. When he stepped out the back door, the quiet came as a jolt. His ears were ringing slightly, and he took his time laying the meat on the grill just to give himself a respite.

It was while they were passing seconds around that Ziba mentioned preschool. Did I tell you? Sami heard her ask Bitsy. Susan's starting Julia Jessup in the fall.

Bitsy was helping herself to another grilled tomato. She paused and looked at Ziba. What's Julia Jessup? she asked.

It's the preschool Sami went to. The one where Maryam works now.

She's starting there this fall? Bitsy asked.

Ziba nodded, beaming.

But she's only two years old! Bitsy said.

Two and a half, Ziba reminded her. Julia Jessup accepts them at two.

That may very well be, Bitsy said. She was sitting indignantly straight, almost swaybacked, the grilled tomato suspended in its serving spoon. But just because they accept her at that age doesn't mean she should go.

It doesn't? Ziba asked.

Two is way too young! She's still a baby!

Ziba's lips parted and she looked toward the kitchen, although she couldn't have seen Susan from where she was sitting.

Look, Bitsy said briskly. She dropped the tomato on her plate with a plunk. I've tried to understand about your working outside the home Just a couple of days a week! Ziba broke in. (This was a sore point between them, Sami knew from past discussions.) And more like half days, really.

Sometimes, though, you work on Saturdays, Bitsy pointed out. But Sami's with her on Saturdays! And Maryam is with her on weekdays, or my family if they're visiting.

Yes, and so that I can understand, Bitsy went on in her forbearing tone. But to send a teeny tiny toddler off to preschool, a child still in diapers. . She faltered. Am I right? She is still in diapers? She isn't trained yet, is she?

Ziba shook her head. Bitsy seemed to take heart. And furthermore a child who had a very rocky beginning, she said. When you consider the adjustments she has had to make so far Now, isn't that interesting! Ziba's brother Ali said suddenly. He leaned toward Maryam, who was seated across the table from him. I didn't realize you worked in a preschool, Khanom. Nobody ever informed me of that. You teach small children?

Sami had to admire the man. Evidently life in a large family had honed his peacemaking skills. And Maryam proved equally adept. She sent him the brilliant, purposeful smile of someone being interviewed. Oh, no, I just help part-time in the office, she told him. When Sami was a pupil there I used to volunteer, you see. I filed, I typed, I made phone calls. . She gazed brightly around at the others. And then my husband died and I experienced, you might say, a little spell of financial panic. I believe that often happens with widows. They might have a perfectly adequate pension or life insurance or whatnot, but for the first time they're on their own and so they panic.

Really, Bitsy's father said. And do widowers suffer a similar panic?

Sami couldn't tell if Dave honestly wanted to know or was just contributing to the rescue effort. Maryam might have been doubtful herself, from the assessing gaze she sent him. Ah, she said finally. Well, widowers, now: I believe their panic relates more to household issues. They worry because now they will have no woman to take care of them. Sometimes they grow quite desperate. They make very sad mistakes.

Dave gave a short laugh. I'll bear that in mind, he told her.

Sami expected her to protest to assure him that she hadn't meant anything personal but she merely nodded. And then Linwood appeared in the kitchen doorway, several grains of rice sticking to one lens of his glasses, and cleared his throat and announced that Jin-Ho had a stomachache. Oh, dear, Bitsy said. It must be all the excitement. She rose and laid her napkin aside and went into the kitchen.

Ziba wasn't enjoying herself anymore. Sami could tell that, if no one else could. She was gazing down at her plate, not eating, fiddling with her fork. He was too far away to reach over and stroke her hand. He tried to catch her eye but she wouldn't look up. Instead, by accident, he caught Mrs. Hakimi's eye. Mrs. Hakimi seemed to have been lying in wait for him, because the instant he glanced toward her she put on a toothy smile. He didn't know how much of the conversation she'd understood. He smiled back at her and looked away.

Why couldn't Ziba just shrug Bitsy off? Why was she so susceptible to Bitsy's criticisms? Maybe they should find some Iranian friends. Enough of this struggle to fit in, to keep up!

He heard Brad, at the other end of the table, telling Aunt Azra that he envied her. Envy, Aunt Azra said slowly. Sami knew she was repeating the word because she wasn't sure of the meaning, but Brad must have thought she was disputing him. He said, No, I mean it! Absolutely. One day not too far off, immigrants are going to be the new elite in this country. That's because they bear no burden of guilt. Their forefathers didn't steal any Native American land and they never owned slaves. They have perfectly clear consciences.

Aunt Azra was staring at him with a look of blank astonishment. Sami was fairly certain it was the word consciences that had stumped her.

If Ziba had not been so downcast, she would have been nagging Sami about the final round of kebabs. He slid back his chair and stood up. Save some room, folks! There's one last batch coming, he said. He went out to the kitchen, where he found his way blocked by Bitsy. She was kneeling beside Jin-Ho at the children's table. Sweetie? she was asking. You want to go lie down? Jin-Ho shook her head. Susan, seated next to her, leaned forward to peer into Jin-Ho's face with a comical expression of concern.

Then Bitsy said, Oh.

She was looking at Jin-Ho's tumbler, which was empty except for the ice cubes. You had a soft drink, she told Jin-Ho.

Jin-Ho stuck out her bottom lip and averted her eyes.

Well, no wonder! Bitsy said. Of course your stomach hurts! My goodness!

Sami said, Oh, give her a break, Bitsy.

Bitsy pivoted to look up at him.

He felt a sort of rush to the head, a surge of joyous rage. He said, Don't you ever quit?

Excuse me?

You and your little digs about soft drinks, refined sugar, working mothers, preschools I don't understand, Bitsy told him. She rose, holding on to the back of Jin-Ho's chair. Did I say something wrong?

You've said everything wrong, and you owe my wife an apology.

I owe… Ziba? I don't understand!

Figure it out, he said, and then he brushed past her and headed toward the back door.

From behind him, in a very small voice, Susan said, Papa? Is Bitsy bad?

Uh, he said. He paused and glanced back at her. She had her eyebrows raised in two worried slants like the two sides of a roof. He said, No, Susie — june, never mind. I guess I'm just feeling irritable.

It was only when he was searching for the word irritable literally, quick-tempered that he realized that both he and Susan had been speaking Farsi. This was a shock but also a satisfaction, for some reason. He flung a triumphant glance at Bitsy, who was still holding on to Jin-Ho's chair and gaping at him, and then he went on out into the yard.

By now the kebabs were way overdone. The lamb chunks might still be salvaged, but the chicken looked like leather. He used a pot holder to grab the skewers one by one and shift them to the platter, and then he lifted the grate so he could stir the coals apart with the tongs. His heartbeat was gradually slowing. The rage had dimmed and he was left feeling slightly foolish.

When the screen door clicked shut, he turned to see Brad approaching. In his Orioles T-shirt and flapping shorts Brad looked mussed and uncomfortable. He stopped a foot or so away and swatted at some insect buzzing around his head. Then he said, How you doing there?

I'm okay, Sami said. He turned back to the grill. He poked a coal with the tongs.

Guess we've had a little misunderstanding of some sort, Brad said.

Sami poked another coal. Then he said, We didn't have a misunderstanding.

All right, Brad said. Why not tell me what happened.

We were all fine, Sami said. Then your wife comes along and hurts my wife's feelings.

Well, how, exactly?

Sami looked at him. He said, You have to ask?

I'm asking, friend.

You sat there at the table; you heard her slam our entire approach to child-rearing; you saw how she ruined our party She ruined…? Aw, gee, Sami, Brad said. I know Bitsy can be outspoken sometimes, but 'Pushy' is a better word for it, Sami said.

Now, hold on, here Pushy, and self-righteous, and overbearing, and… pushy, Sami said.

To demonstrate, he stepped forward and pushed against the front of Brad's T-shirt with one palm. Brad's chest felt spongy, almost bosomy. It made Sami want to push him again, harder, and so he did. Now, hold the phone! Brad said, and he pushed back, but in a half hearted way. Sami dropped the tongs and grabbed hold of him with both hands and tried to butt him in the stomach with his head, and Brad seized two fistfuls of Sami's hair and lunged against him and knocked him flat on the ground, luckily clear of the grill, and landed panting on top of him. For a moment they both lay there, as if wondering what to do next. Sami had a dizzy feeling and he couldn't get his breath. He heard high, thin sounds from the direction of the back door the distressed cries of the women, no different in Farsi than in English, as everyone streamed out onto the steps.

Brad rolled off Sami and staggered to his feet and wiped his face with his sleeve. Sami sat up and then stood. He bent forward, wheezing, and shook his head to clear it.

He should have been aghast at himself. He should have been mortified that anyone had witnessed this. Instead, though, he felt exultant. He couldn't seem to keep a straight face as he raised his eyes to his guests, who were frozen in poses of horror. The children were dumbstruck and the men were openmouthed and the women were pressing their hands to their cheeks. He turned to Brad and found him sheepishly grinning, and they fell on each other and hugged. Clapping Brad's broad, damp back, stumbling around the yard in a clumsy dance, Sami imagined that to the relatives, the two of them must resemble two characters in some sitcom, two wild and crazy Americans, two regular American guys.

Brad and Bitsy were talking about adopting a second child. To Dave's mind, this was insane. He didn't say so, of course. He said, Is that a fact. But Bitsy must have caught something in his tone, because she said, All right, Dad, out with it. What do you have against it?

Nothing! he told her. Why do you ask?

You think I'm too old, don't you.

Absolutely not, he told her.

This much was true. He wasn't quite sure of her age, frankly. Thirty-five? Forty? Connie would have known. He did some quick math. Okay, forty-three. But that wasn't his objection. Mainly he just felt that people shouldn't press their luck. He'd been so apprehensive with the first adoption, and so relieved when it worked out. Jin-Ho was his most interesting grandchild. And probably the brightest, or second-brightest next to Linwood. Why not quit while they were ahead? Anyhow, children were a lot of trouble. You would think Brad and Bitsy could content themselves with just one.

He had felt the same about his own children. He had embarked on parenthood reluctantly, sending regretful backward glances at his carefree young-married days, and although the first baby had proved a delight he hadn't hankered for more. If not for Connie's lobbying, Bitsy would have been an only child. Then of course the two boys were delights as well, and he wouldn't have traded them for anything, but still he could remember quite clearly sitting in the melee of tantrums and wet diapers and little sharp-edged building blocks and thinking, Too many children and not enough Connie. He had felt almost childlike himself as he angled for Connie's attention, snatched the smallest stray bits of her, competed for her ear and for her thoughtful, focused gaze.

What would Connie have said to Bitsy's new plan?

Oh, probably Go ahead, dear. I'm sure it will turn out wonderfully.

He missed Connie more than he could say. He tried not to say, in fact. She had died in March of '99, over a year ago. Almost a year and a half. He could see people thinking that he must be past the worst of it. Time to buck up! Time to move on! But the truth was, it was harder now than immediately after her death. Back then he had felt so grateful that she no longer had to suffer. Besides which, he'd been just plain exhausted. He'd just wanted to get some sleep.

But now he was as lonely as God. He was rackingly, achingly lonely, and he rattled around the house with far too much time on his hands and not enough to do. It was summer. School was over not only for the year but forever, in his case, because in June he had retired. Had this been a mistake? He had always had other interests his hobbies and his volunteer work and community concerns but now he couldn't get up the energy. He sighed a lot and he spoke aloud to Connie. He said, Going to fix that door lock, finally, and Well, drat. I meant to buy eggs. Once or twice he thought he caught a glimpse of her, but in situations so unlikely that he couldn't pretend they were real. (On a hot July afternoon, for instance, she stood by the backyard bird feeder tugging off a snow-flecked mitten with her teeth.) More satisfying were the memories of past events that popped up out of nowhere, as vivid as home movies. The time soon after they married when she drove their VW Beetle into the driveway with smoke pouring from the back seat (something to do with the engine) and flung open the door and jumped out and threw herself into his arms; or the time she sent in his name for a local TV station's Hero of the Day award and he had been so gruff and ungracious when she told him (his heroism had involved carpooling three children at all hours of the day and night, not any rescues from burning buildings), although now his eyes filled with tears at her gesture.

He thought, Why, this is just unbearable.

He thought, I should have been allowed to practice on somebody less important first. I don't know how to do this.

He forgot that he had practiced, on four grandparents and two parents. But there was no comparison, really.

He had tended her illness for so long that it had become second nature, and now he couldn't believe that she could manage without him. Was she comfortable where she was? Did she have everything she needed? He couldn't stand to think she might be feeling abandoned.

Yet he was completely unreligious and had never conceived of an afterlife.

He kept her voice on the answering machine because erasing it seemed an act of violence. He knew some people were disquieted when they heard her cheery greeting. It's the Dickinsons! Leave a message! He could tell by their initial Uh. . when he played back their calls. Bitsy, though, said she found it a comfort. Once she phoned him and said, in a quavering voice, Dad? Can I ask you a favor? Can I just dial this number a few times and you not answer?

I'm having a kind of blue day today and I wanted to hear Mom's voice.

It was Bitsy who was his partner in mourning, much more so than her brothers. Remember your mother's silk pie? he would ask her, or Remember that song she used to sing about the widow with her baby? and he wouldn't have to offer any excuse for bringing it up. Bitsy fell in with him unquestioningly. Her tomato aspic, too, she would say, and Yes, of course, and what was that other song? The one about the lumberjack?

Even with Bitsy, though, he rationed these conversations. He didn't want to worry her. He didn't want her sending him one of her probing glances. Are you all right, Dad? Are you really all right? Would you like to come to dinner this evening? We've invited the next-door neighbors but you're more than welcome, I promise. It would do you good to get out.

It would not do him good to get out. That much he was certain of. In social situations, now, all he could think was, What is the point? The chitchat about the weather, politics, property taxes, children useless, every bit of it. And the neighbors dropping by his house with casseroles and cookies. Guess what! Tillie Brown told him from behind a Saran-wrapped platter. I'm another grandma!

Pardon?

My daughter just gave birth to her fourth little boy!

Good God, he said, and he gazed down at the platter. Salmon loaf, from the looks of it. He was touched by these offerings but puzzled. What did they imagine he could do with it all? There was only one of him! And anyhow, food tasted to him like sawdust these days.

A couple of the unattached women had told him they would love to go out some evening for dinner although not nearly as many women as the folklore would have you believe. He always put them off. Even if he'd had any interest, which he didn't, the effort of adjusting to a new person was beyond him. It had been hard enough the first time. He said, Well, now, isn't that nice of you, and never followed up. They didn't pursue it. He suspected they were just as glad not to have to bother. More and more of the world seemed to be barely trudging along, from what he had observed.

Bitsy said they hoped to adopt this second child from China. There was a greater need in China, she said. But applying was more complicated than it had been for Korea, and physically obtaining the child would be more complicated too. They would have to travel there to get her. And it would definitely be a her, she said. She gazed off at Jin-Ho, who was playing in the sandbox some distance from the patio where they sat. Two little girls, she told Dave. Won't that be sweet? Luckily, Brad has never been the type who thought he had to have a son.

Will you take Jin-Ho with you to China? Dave asked.

Oh, my Lord, no! With all those unfamiliar germs? Besides, the trip will be so difficult. It isn't just the flight; we'll have to stay for several weeks while we go through the paperwork. She set her iced-tea glass down with a sudden, decisive motion and looked at him directly. In fact, I've been meaning to ask you, she said. Do you think we could leave her with you?

With me?

Now that you're retired.

But You know how she adores you.

But, honey, it's been a long time since I took care of a threeyear-old.

Unfortunately, Bitsy told him, she'll be more like four or five. Maybe even in kindergarten. This whole process could take a couple of years, we hear.

Oh, Dave said. Well, then.

It crossed his mind that he might very well be dead in a couple of years. He was surprised at how the thought cheered him.

It was the Donaldsons' turn to host the girls' Arrival Party. Bitsy was already debating the best day for it. The fifteenth falls on a Tuesday this year, she told Dave, and so Ziba's asking why not have the party the Sunday before. But… I don't know. Granted Sunday is more convenient, but I'd prefer to celebrate on the actual date, wouldn't you?

Well, either way, Dave said.

I mean the real, actual date the girls arrived in our lives! Right, he said hastily. Sure. The actual fifteenth.

He felt he'd been backed into a corner. He often did, with Bitsy. Oh, this daughter of his had always managed to make life harder than it needed to be, for herself and for everyone around her. From earliest childhood she had held fierce, unbending opinions, and even though she tended to be right he could see that there were times when people wished they disagreed with her. Maybe global warming was not so bad after all! he could hear them thinking. Maybe world peace was less desirable than they had imagined!

Connie used to say that Bitsy's problem was, she doubted her own goodness. At heart she was insecure; she worried she was unworthy. Dave found it helpful to remind himself of that, on occasion. (And what would he do without Connie's forgiving slant of vision to guide him in the future?)

Then after the date had been settled Tuesday, what a shock there was the issue of the menu. Apparently Bitsy felt that the Yazdans had changed the rules, as she put it, when they'd served a full meal the year before. I mean, look what we did the first year, she told Dave on the phone. We put out the simplest refreshments, tea and coffee and cake. But last year! Last year we had enough food to feed a homeless shelter for a month. Jin-Ho got a stomachache and slept clear through the movie; never saw a bit of it.

So? Dave said. This year you do it your way again.

The Yazdans might feel that was inhospitable, though. You know how they focus on food. And then if I do serve a meal, I could never cook so many dishes. I don't have enough pots and pans! I don't have big enough pots and pans.

Make your nice tart lemonade with the little bits of peel, Dave said in his most coaxing voice, and get a sheet cake from the bakery…

But Bitsy wasn't listening. She said, My vegetable lasagna, do you think? Or my Pakistani dish? No, wait; nothing with rice. Talk about a big pot! Remember the time I served habichuelas negras? The first Yazdan to spoon out some rice took almost the whole platterful!

Dave laughed. He enjoyed the Yazdans. On the surface they seemed all primary colors, so innocent and impressionable, but he'd had glimpses of more complicated interiors from time to time. Mr. Hakimi, for instance. Now, there were some darker hues, for sure. Will the Hakimis be coming? he asked Bitsy hopefully.

Yes, and one of Ziba's brothers but I can't remember which. She's always got so many relatives staying there; wouldn't you think they'd be missed at work? While our own family, on the other hand… I'm very distressed about Mac and Laura. They knew it would be Arrival Day; they could have taken Linwood on his college visits any other time this summer or this whole year, for that matter. But oh, no. Oh, no. And then Brad's parents; well, typical, I guess. Them and their never-ending cruises: it's as if they didn't care! I wonder if they'd act differently if Jin-Ho were their biological grandchild.

If Jin-Ho were their biological grandchild this whole damn-fool Arrival Party would not have been cooked up, Dave thought. But what he said was, Ah, now. They're just scared they won't have enough to do with their time; that's why they overschedule.

Good Lord, he sounded like Connie. Maybe Bitsy thought so too, because instead of arguing she changed the subject. She said, Do you remember Guys and Dolls?

What? Guys and Dolls?

Do you remember a song they sang called 'I'll Know When My Love Comes Along'?

Oh. The song.

I've always felt 'She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain' lacks dignity, somehow, Bitsy said.

If Dave stretched the telephone cord to its very farthest limit, he found he could just reach the remote control for the television set. He switched on the evening news and then hit the mute button so that Bitsy wouldn't suspect.

Arrival Day dawned heavy and humid, with enough clouds building in the west to give hope for a cooling thunderstorm. None arrived, though, and by evening Dave was dreading the thought of putting on decent clothes and venturing forth in the heat. At home he'd taken to going about in just his swim trunks. He lumbered upstairs to his closet, where he stood idly ruffling the gray hairs on his chest as he contemplated his choices. Eventually he settled on a seersucker shirt and khakis. He should shower again, but he wasn't up to it. He went off to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face instead.

One thing he had learned about Bitsy's parties was that it didn't pay to be early. She grew very managerial just before her guests arrived. He would have been put to work folding napkins or rearranging chairs or something equally unnecessary. So he took his time leaving the house, and when he reached the Donaldsons' place he found several cars already parked at the curb. The girls were out on the sidewalk Susan industriously pedaling Jin-Ho's tricycle while Jin-Ho stood watching. (Somehow it was always Susan who got first dibs, Dave had noticed. She might be smaller and frailer, but she was laughably determined.)